“[E]ven those who supposedly love the art form, and who are involved in putting it on, are increasingly laboring under the delusion that it is inherently over-the-top, overblown, ridiculous, and, well, drivel.” According to this way of thinking, “opera has to have arias; opera has to have big emotions; therefore, we will have arias and ensembles, because they are the ingredients that make opera, even if it means stopping the action to tell the audience things that we already know.”