Well, theatre, and opera in particular, has been characterised by sentimental vulgarity, by exorbitance and the belief that, in order for it to be entertaining, in order for it to be diverting, for the the audience to be taken out of itself, it must do something that is in fact different from what they see in real life. I think that the most exciting thing is to have your attentions drawn to something that you overlooked in real life.

– Opera director Jonathan Miller interviewed at theartsdesk.com. Via AJ. The article’s got a great section on his attempts to bring American English pronounciation into opera (Donizetti):

…they suddenly realised that American English is not a degenerate form of received English, it’s simply another form of English. They kept on saying at the beginning, oh, well, the ‘rs’ will violate the resonance and the pronunciation. I said it won’t at all!