Christopher Webber wrote, replying to Janos' Jeremaid about opera directors:

>>What directors are most interested in, believe it or not, is illuminating
>>opera for an audience here and now.  Singers and musicians are motivated
>>by the same fundamental desire to communicate to their audience as actors,
>>and - to speak frankly - it is an insult to the integrity of many
>>hard-working music and theatre professionals to insinuate otherwise.

and Janos replies:

>How foolish I feel now, realizing that I missed this Universal Goodwill
>at work all over the world.  Had I but known this, I would have ceased
>producing all that trouble-making reportage, questioning the uniform
>integrity and excellence of all directors who ever put a benign trench
>coat over illuminating and meaningful acts of oral sex on the opera
>stage.

Support for Janos' point of view comes from the conductor, Marek Janowski.
In an interview with Richard Dyer in the Boston Globe, he declares that
he will no longer conduct opera in opera houses because he no longer
wishes to deal with crazy directors who  know nothing about music. He
will conduct operas in concert. Janowski has a track record in opera
houses, it must be pointed out. In another recent interview with Dyer
the composer Ligeti bitterly complained about the director Peter Sellars
on similar grounds.

Bernard Chasan