Bring the house down?

Reader question:

Please explain "brought the house down" in this sentence: "Lady Gaga brought the house down with a 'Sound of Music' tribute at the Oscars Sunday." What house?

My comments:

Lady Gaga sang "Sound of Music" at the Oscars?

Well, apparently she did.

Apparently she did very well, too, judging from the fact that she brought the house down.

It is obvious that she didn't bring the house down with hammers and bulldozers. No, she didn't make use of those tools. Instead, she did it with her voice.

Her voice was so loud that time that the roof collapsed due to the vibration it caused.

No kidding, you say?

I am kidding, of course. I'm pulling your leg. Her voice didn't do it, not directly at any rate. Her voice, you see, sounded so good and her rendition of that legendary song was so perfect that the audience gave her a thunderous applause. They cheered so loud and clapped hands so hard that the noise brought the house down.

Not literally, of course. Just saying.

"Bring down the house", you see, is an idiom not to be taken literally. In other words, Lady Gaga did not break any furniture or anything like that. What happened was she sang and received a loud cheer. Just like that.

But the cheer was so loud that it seemed enough to shatter windows and raise the roof.

Raise the roof, by the way is what we Chinese sometimes use describe a similar noisy situation.

Anyways, no real houses are demolished here. And even the "house" in the phrase "bring the house don" doesn't refer to the family home we live in, but instead to theater houses, big auditoriums housing a great number of people.

In short, no real damage is done, and whenever they say someone is bringing the house down, you are not to take them literally but the concept, the concept of loud noises threatening to shatter windows and raising the roof is pretty easy to understand, right?