Ron Chaplin:

>I haven't really been following this string, so I hope I haven't gotten
>the gist of it wrong.  I always thought that the reason the words of an
>opera are difficult to understand, even in English (for myself), is that
>the emphasis is on the music, not on the lyrics; how the music sounds more
>than what the lyrics mean.  Of course the lyrics are important, but if you
>want to follow what is being sung, you use the libretto.

There are a host of interrelated problems, many of which have already
been mentioned:  large halls, miked, singers who are basically voice
jocks rather than singing actors, orchestral conductors with little opera
experience ignorant of proper balance between singers and instruments, a
public that accepts this view of opera (a vocal display with pretty clothes
and scenery, rather than a drama set to music), singers untrained to sing
in languages other Italian and German, and a complacency on the part of
producers and directors with the current state of affairs.

You can't tell me that great opera composers want vocal mush made from
their libretti.  If the libretto or the words didn't matter, composers
wouldn't have hounded their librettists for better words or, in Wagner's
case, for instance, spent so long writing a libretto.  The long vowel
movement that passes for opera singing (Lieder singers are generally far
better at projecting both words and dramatic meaning) I suspect would have
driven Verdi, Wagner, and Strauss nuts.

Steve Schwartz