If the amplification talked about in this thread is electronic tunic of the
acoustics of a hall so that it is so natural in effect that you can't tell
it's amplification, then maybe this can be justified.

To me, amplification is what I experience going to musical theatre
where either the singers are body miked or there are pickups along
the footlights.  The effect of all this is to make the singers sound
artifically electronic, with their voices coming from the huge speakers
on either side of the stage or above it.  The effect is of disembodied
voices, the stage action for all intents and purposes a mimed performance
to (badly) recorded music.  I prefer the Salzburg Marionettes.  There is
no sense of participating in a live event in which the artists address
themselves to their audience, where we can feel as though each of us is
being communicated to directly.  It's a giant video.  Blech.

So far opera has been relatively untouched (though I remember a very
electronic Commendatore in HvK's 1969 Salzburg Don G - a hideous memory
that has never left me!), but how long can it remain so?

Mother of mercy, is this the end of civilization as we know it?

Eric Kisch