Indisputably from every ideal standpoint an opera should be performed in the language in which it is written. But properly understood, opera is at least as much theater as music. Any drama--musical or otherwise--suffers through translation; yet no one would seriously suggest a performance in the United States, under any but exceptional circumstances, of a work by Chekhov, Ibsen, or Sartre in the original language. Even in regard to opera this problem is beginning to be understood; and anyone who has attended recent performances in English at the Metropolitan--or imagined, on the contrary, what might have been the result had _Porgy and Bess_ or a work of Gian-Carlo Menotti always been sung in Italian or German--has an idea of the importance of this question. For a relatively inexperienced public like the American before the World War I, a public not well versed in opera in English and unfamiliar with the languages in which the works were sung, hence, in reality, with the works themselves, the foreign language becomes an obstacle. It fosters the sense of remoteness referred to above; not only the words, but in some cases even the titles of the works remain mysterious even when the plots may be familiar. The public, as a whole, remains in the dark not only as to what Isolde and Brangäne, Isolde and Tristan, or Tristan and Kurvenal are saying in the respective acts of _Tristan_, but also it cannot fully participate in the musical and dramatic unfolding of _Otello_, the infinitely delicate articulation of _Falstaff_, or in the complications of the last two scenes of _Rigoletto_. In such instances the drama is missed if the meaning of the words is not understood; and when the words are not completely understood in every detail, at least the experience of an enacted libretto can convey some of the power of the music. It must be emphasized, however, that for any public a drama is drama only if it can become the reverse of remote. It must be truly and intimately felt; and a living theater cannot exist entirely on imported fare. In order really to live, an opera must be felt as drama; otherwise results different from those noted are scarcely obtained. Neither composer nor performer can breathe life into opera unless its drama is felt, and the public takes fire only from things it has lived. It remains basically indifferent if there is no point of contact with whatever is dramatic in its own world or age; from its own epoch the public learns what drama _per se_ is, and only from this point of departure can it understand dramas of other periods. For this reason we speak of French, or German, or Italian, or Russian opera. With few exceptions, what was lacking at the Metropolitan of the period in question were operas written in English, in quantity and in quality sufficient to solve this problem and to lay the foundations for a vital operatic tradition.