Opera? Silly? You’d think a 400-year-old art form adored by millions, which brings lumps to throats and makes the hairs stand up on your arms, deserves more respect. And I do. Honestly. I’d be the first to admit to a passion verging on the obsessive. But opera has a dark secret. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know this, but opera is silly. Nay, sometimes it is very silly. It inhabits a world where people sing instead of speaking, where innocent bystanders are apt to form flash-mob-style choruses, and where a person can take ten minutes to sing their lungs out before they expire, no matter how deadly the wound or how advanced the respiratory disease.

Among the silliest operas, L'Etoile

Opera and outrageous plots go hand in hand: babies...