It's remarkable that classical music is the only field where people have to be tempted to listen to new work by having old music in the program.

It's as though publishers couldn't get an audience for Rowling unless a few chapters of Dickens were thrown in.

I'm not sure it's possible to improve operas with better plotting and characterization. If I understand the purpose of opera, it's to have rapidly changing highly intense emotions, and this may be inconsistent with more realism than is already typical.