No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. W. H. — W.H. Auden

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. W. H.

Author: W.H. Auden

Insight: We've all felt that disconnect between what we're supposed to do and what we actually need to do. When you're genuinely overwhelmed—heartbroken, furious, or transported by joy—the sensible response feels hollow. You don't want advice. You want to feel the full weight of it, even if that means being a little ridiculous. Opera understood this before psychology did. The genre thrives on excess because excess is honest. Real emotion doesn't follow the neat logic of a spreadsheet or a five-step plan. It's grandiose. It repeats itself. It makes you say things that sound absurd in daylight but feel absolutely necessary in the moment. A soprano doesn't sing an aria because the plot requires exposition—she sings because something inside her needs to spill out, and ordinary speech can't contain it. This is why we still recognize ourselves in opera, even if we've never seen one. We all have moments when being reasonable feels like a betrayal of what we actually feel. The best relationships, creative breakthroughs, and personal transformations usually involve at least one scene that, looking back, seems a little too much. That's the opera part. That's where we're most alive.

Source: Notes on Music and Opera, The Dyer's Hand, p. 466, 1962