Jack - here's a quote from the link you put up:

"THE KING
I thank you, good men of Brabant!
How my heart shall swell with pride
if on every acre of German soil I find
such mighteous throngs of troops!
Let the Empire's enemy now approach,
we will meet him with courage:
from the barren wastes of the East
he shall never dare attack again!
For German soil the German sword!
Thus shall the Empire's might be proved!"

"Not everyone wants to suspend reality and accustom the ear to the stylized musical performance in opera."

Happy to suspend reality (something one has to do with theatre of all kinds) and I'm happy to accustom my ear to stylized musical performances of all kinds. I like Napalm Death for instance and other growled death metal vocals, which have a lot in common with opera in terms of extremes of stylization.

I listen to a fair bit of opera and go maybe 2-3 times a year. (Used to go much more often when my girlfriend worked at Covent Garden opera house). But that doesn't stop me turning off the critical part of my brain that recognises the bathos in that discrepancy between the (necessary) projection/over-enunciation inherent in the form and the libretto: performance investing even the most slightest of libretto sentences with a disproportionate significance. I'm often surprised postwar composers haven't exploited this fact. (Suspect someone probably has, and that I'm just unaware of it.)