ABSTRACT
The (very) English playwright and composer Noël Coward, author of the charming if retrogressive operetta Bitter Sweet, held an ambivalent, even bitter-sweet, attitude towards the genre. In response to the criticism that ‘the trouble with opera is that it is not what it used to be’, he delivered this verdict: ‘People are wrong when they say that opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what is wrong with it.’ 1
