Opera, we are told, is at a watershed. Should we be worried? The most contentious issues relate not to the art form as such but to the way it is fostered and produced by opera companies in traditional opera houses. Opera is at once cerebral and visceral; at its extremes either intensely intellectual or shamelessly flamboyant. How can both be accommodated under one roof, so to speak, with one management philosophy and one style of funding? Take heart, we have been here before, albeit in a pre-digital age, and opera has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for reinvention.

Internal contradictions have been part and parcel of the operatic world from the beginning. One of its sources was distinctly highbrow – an attempt by Florentine musicians and poets in the late 16th century to revive the declamatory style of ancient Greek tragedy and find a musical equivalent for the spoken word. Those efforts led in part to recitative, probably the least appealing feature of the operas of the 17th and 18th centuries. One early French visitor to Rome advocated a game of draughts to while away the tedium, but most people took the opportunity for chatter and a pinch of snuff.

While the...