What’s Opera, Director?

AMERICAN THEATRE: What’s the main difference between opera and theatre? The answer, in formal terms, is easy: One is music-based, the other text-based. Plays have actors, operas singers. There’s also a contrast of scale and logistics: A play doesn’t need an orchestra or conductor, a chorus or an army of supernumeraries. Theatre spaces are often smaller because of this, more amorphous and malleable, whereas the opera “house” is a house for a reason. Obviously these contrasts are a bit less sharp when it comes to musical theatre vs. opera—but even the Gershwin Theatre, largest of all Broadway houses and the longtime home of Wicked, is about half the size of the Metropolitan Opera.