Have spent probably three hours today, looking for a way to make newly opened tabs pop to the front and become the active (in-focus) tab, without any additional intervention after right-clicking a link and specifying 'open in new tab'. As SO MANY others coming from long experience with other browsers have discussed, it doesn't need to be the default behavior, but it should be quickly available either as a 'setting' or via an add-on/extension.
Alas, it IS available. Tabs to the front! by troorl is available in Opera add-ons: link text
I am happy, now, and relieved. I'm still puzzled why Moderators on this Forum have said, basically, 'why would you wanna do that, anyway? Opera doesn't work like that.' I guess since the functionality wasn't invented in an Opera world, it needs to be disdained. Sad.