Ok, I'll bite! I disagree. I love him, I enjoyed watching this clip very much, and agreed with almost everything he said in it (including "opera is a musical art form") but I disagree that every motion of emotion is already in the composition.

Even on a purely musical level, there is a huge amount of interpretation that goes into a production - from the singer and the conductor alike. These nuances can have a massive dramatic impact, even before other interpretations are taken into account.

But really, where I take issue is the idea that every element of the story-telling is already there in the composition. Of course isn't - and a great production can do a lot more than just 'add something' to the composition: it can inject the power and genius of the music (an abstract, non-literal power) directly into the heart, into the intellect, into society.

The beautiful this about opera, for me, is that the music is in the service of the drama, even as the drama is fundamentally in the service of the piece. Sure, the music without the staging is innately a deeper, more complex, cogent piece of art than the staging can ever be without the music, but it's in their marriage that the work finds true personal and social relevance.

"What were those two ladies singing about?" asks Red in The Shawshank Redemption, as two beautiful voices swirl and wrap themselves in each-other, evoking longing, hope, desire... Well, those two ladies are enjoying writing a letter to trick a cheating husband into a trap that will punish him for his transgressions. It's profound because the letter touches us where it's designed to touch him, so we're hooked in too, as seduced as he will be. And our heart is with the countess too, who is having her heart broken by the cheating husband, even as she collaborates with the woman he desires. This kinda context is what the composer was aiming for when they composed the piece, and you won't get it listening to the piece cold: you need to know the story, and it would be hard to argue that you'll get more out of reading the synopsis than you will by watching I staged. So I'd argue the drama is fundamental, not 'fun, or adding a bit'.

And that's before you even get to theatrical interpretation! The scene where Rigoletto comes home to Gilda reads very different depending on whether you thing the music is driven by Rigoletto's anxiety or Gilda's. I always thought the former, but I saw a production that gave that music to Gilda, had her nervous around her loving but obsessive and overbearing father, and it blew the piece open, made so much more of both characters, and set the relationship up perfectly.

That kind of decision is not always in the composition, even if (my personal preference here) every theatrical decision should be ROOTED in the composition. Opera is a brilliant, beautiful alchemy between music and drama, and I think should be discussed in those terms even if the different components of the art form have different priorities at different times in the production process.