Soap operas are television (originally radio) dramas that play like bad librettos without music.
Nikolai Volkov's libretto is mystifying without the program notes, which should not be needed to make sense of art.
And in the comfortable confines of the home or the car, the music is usually heard without libretto or titles, as a sensual experience in melody, harmony and a foreign tongue.
The trouble with New Jersey politics is that it's almost impossible to follow without a libretto.
In 2012, for instance, a new production of the Tagalog sarswela Walang sugat (1902; "Without Wounds," libretto by Severino Reyes, music by Fulgencio Tolentino) was staged in Manila.
"I find it hard to speak without a libretto," he confesses, showing how easily he can play Cassio to Manur's Otello, but also how vulnerable he is to the insidious promptings of Natalia's Iago-like companion, Dato.
Ultimately, Kirstein had to choose between this liberating kind of work, which involved him in every creative aspect of production, and the job of chasing funds for the man who, on his return to ballet, in 1941, rapidly choreographed — without any libretto, to music by Tchaikovsky and Bach, and ceding no authority whatever — "Ballet Imperial" and "Concerto Barocco".
The libretto tries to improve the screenplay; without making an intensive comparison, it seems like the two love triangles (with the Astaire character trying to steal successive girlfriend/stage partners from Bing) have been toned down; certainly Lila (Megan Sikora), the first of the girlfriends, doesn't seem to have any romantic link to either Fred Corbin Bleuu) or Bing Bryce Pinkhamm).
The director typically practices a kind of stylish, prudent revisionism, moving librettos forward chronologically without venturing too dangerously close to the present.
Mr. Zorn's answer to the challenge of finding a good story and libretto, it would appear, is to do without them completely.
