“Why do we have to work so hard to love new American opera? Part of the problem is that even those who love opera tend to think of it these days as a problem child: an acquired taste, a genre that has to work hard to win people over, an art form for which one must make allowances. Some try to conceal it as something other than it is, downplaying the word “opera” on marketing materials about works adapted from familiar books and/or films: they’ll like it, the reasoning goes, if only we can get them in.”