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