Since a few asked what symphonic metal was, I thought I would share and enlighten about the delightful genre. Its a blend of opera vocals and rock or metal musical base sometimes including orchestracial additions. They usually sing about stories and legends and have a general moral meaning to each song. Its a rather popular genre in Europe and is usually accompanied by the genre gothic metal and sometimes black metal, industrial metal, or industrial black metal.
Here's an example of an English singing German-Norwegian band called Leaves' Eyes with the song "Elegy