Don, I'm not denying that there's emotion in the storyline of operas.

We could also say that Jean-Claude Van Damme films have emotional content. Let's take "Kickboxer" for an example. His brother is a champion kickboxer, Van Damme isn't nearly as good. Then his brother gets paralysed by the bad guy hitting him when he's down, and Van Damme finds someone to train him up to get revenge. His brother gets kidnapped before the fight, so Van Damme basically stands there and gets beat up. Meantime his trainer raids the bad guy's place and frees Van Damme's brother, and Van Damme then fights back and demolishes the bad guy. Lots of emotion in that storyline, for sure.

Now take a guess at how much emotion you see Jean-Claude Van Damme (or pretty much any of the cast) putting in... ;-)

As far as I can see, the majority of operatic singers are hired on the basis of maintaining a decent tone at high volumes (which as you say is a rare ability in itself), and not on their ability to portray a character (which is also a rare ability). So this is rather like hiring people for a martial arts film based on whether they can do a jumping spinning back kick, rather than on acting ability. There will be some who can do both, but simple statistics tells you that they're going to be the minority.

I'm not saying that opera can't be performed by people with the ability to inject emotional content and acting into their performance - or for that matter that martial arts films can't be well-acted. I'm just saying that the vast majority of both aren't. Done well, they can be things of beauty. Done as most of them are, they're interesting for the technical ability of the participants, and nothing more.

All opera singers can do huge volume levels, wide vibrato, amazing range, etc. That doesn't mean that they *should*. That's the problem as I see it - an excess of technical ability and an insufficient amount of emotional involvement in the character to know when to use it.

Graham.