Up until quite recently I would have said that opera is first and foremost theatre Not any more After a brief spell working at u national opera house I learned that opera is in fact only secondly theatre The music comes first Thats as it should be of course But I come from a different world the world of the theatre where the word and the actor speaking it have primacy where there is nobody out front directing the action once the event is under way and where performer and audience mostly speak the same language