Roy Ellefsen wrote:
>Walter Meyer wrote that Tosca is much more realistic than The Magic Flute.
>He wrote that he prefers to listen to the music and ignore the plot. I
>agree, but at least the plot in Flute is entertaining. IMHO Cossi is one
>of the most ridiculous operas in history: those guys sing for 20 min. at
>a stretch, and nobody can recognize their voices???!!. Talk about dumb
>charaters! I love the music, but I cannot bear to watch it performed.
Judging an opera--or even a play written before the 19th century by its
realism or "believability" is to apply twentieth-century aesthetics to an
older form. Realism didn't become a primary concern of dramatists until
Ibsen, and it certainly was not the primary concern of composers. As
Don Satz suggested in another post, it's the exploration of the human
condition--of ideas and emotion--that counts, not plausibility.
John Halbrooks