Why does opera always feel the need to apologise for its plots?

Leos Janacek disliked long operas, and the first act of The Makropulos Affair is a masterclass in how to set up a drama without an ounce of fat. There’s a prelude: driving motor-rhythms, surges of emotion, and somewhere in the distance – far away (or long ago) – the sound of trumpets. The curtain rises and we’re tipped brusquely into a lawyers’ office in the early 20th century. The lawsuit they’re discussing is long-winded and complex: aren’t they always? No matter. By the end of the act, these blustering professional men have been interrupted by the magnetic and imperious diva Emilia Marty, who knows things about the century-old case of Gregor vs Prus that no living person could possibly know. We’re intrigued. End of Act One. That’s not hard – is it?

Welsh National Opera clearly disagrees, because at that point the tenor Mark Le Brocq (playing the solicitor Vitek) walked out with a flipchart, broke character, and after telling us that the first act was incomprehensible even to the cast, proceeded to recap the whole plot so far, as if the lawsuit were anything more than a MacGuffin. That was embarrassing enough, and you cringed in sympathy with Le Brocq (imagine being delegated to deliver such an admission of artistic defeat). He finished with a spoiler: the big reveal from the very end of the opera, completely blown.

Why? Why do opera professionals do things like this? True, opera has long been the subject of abuse, some of it partially valid, but much of it pure prejudice. And the most vacuous libel of the lot is that operatic plots are unusually absurd or complicated. Bollocks: any good mystery begins with a puzzle, and large-scale narratives in any medium become confusing when reduced to a dustjacket summary.