Toadfish Monastery

The only gods I respond to are the gods of music.

Last _{also my granddad calls money The Gods} Post

At the theatre the gods are the cheapest seats.
So 'playing to the gods' has a rather concrete meaning

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Last _{at the Opera too} Post

I consider that as a subsection of theatre.

Opera is where they sing what is too bad for the talking stage

Last _{it's astonishing how bad the libretti of even musical masterpieces can be} Post

That's because music is above theater in Opera.

Last _{a good libretto with unremarkable music is soon forgotten} Post

So why is the traditional titling: Opera by X, (with) music by Y ?
e.g. Die Zauberflöte - Oper von Immanuel Schikaneder, Musik: W.A.Mozart

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Because otherwise their names would be irretrievably forgotten.

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But there are some that did both but not on the same work (i.e. writing the libretto for one opera but composing the music for another).
Arrigo Boito comes to mind (librettist for Verdi and composer of the arguably best Faust opera, Mefistofele).

Later it became fashionable that composers wrote their own libretto but many lacked the talent (but given some 'professional' libretti for esp. Italian operas, this was not limited to composers).

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Boito is obscure as it is, and had he not written music he would be even less known.

Last _{unless the librettist was a writer in his own merit} Post

Last _{writing in the sand} Post

Opera librettos were something for hack writers in italy. Operas had for the most part degenerated into the equivalent of the modern daily soap. Even Rossini said about his Italian operas that it was enough to listen to a single one. He may have actually be the one who coined the phrase 'if you have seen one you have seen them all'. The so-called 'Great/Grand Opera' was invented not, as many believe, by Meyerbeer but by Spontini who, after writing more than 40 operas in Italy (we do not even know the titles of all of them) got fed up and went to France. He came up with the idea of the operatic equivalent of the special effects blockbuster that then became all the rage (even Wagner's first big success, Rienzi,  fell into that category). The libretti were as crappy as before but the spectacle made up for it. It would take quite some time before the 'auteur' opera was born to counter that. And even there special effects remained a necessary tool (Weber's Oberon got created specifically with the (then) modern stage machinery of Covent Garden in mind. As cinemas today buy new sound and projection technology in order to play blockbuster movies, opera houses then invested in stage machinery, so they could stage popular new operas that required all the trickery.

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Interestingly enough, I believe that contemporary operas should try to re-emulate some of those efforts as Broadway musicals occasionally do (like the Spiderman musical that had to employ several protagonists after some wire accidents).

Last _{opera needs more public, and more engaging librettos and special effects will bring more audience to the theaters} Post

There is the heretic opinion that the musical simply is the opera of today and the classic opera just a living fossil.
Spoken dialogue was common in the German type opera (Singspiel) and occurred in 'lighter' French operas too.
Mozart's German operas (Zauberflöte, Entführung) originally had so much dialogue that today large parts get simply dropped.

Last _{the most 'operatic' music today one finds in movies} Post

I'm sure musical writers are convinced that they are making opera.

Last _{or music...} Post

Few manage an all-time classic like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI9Nbt7oJG0

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