Steve Schwartz wrote: >... 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. Perhaps one of the finest librettists was Boito, used by Verdi in Otello and in Falstaff. But do you really think some of the ensemble passages where different groups on the stage are simultaneously singing different texts (Boito's text to Falstaff comes to mind first, but this occurs in other operas also, of course) were expected by the composer to be followed by the audience? Walter Meyer