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