Are unschooled audiences changing the face of Opera? Matthew Gurewitsch talks to four top general managers and finds out how the public's musical illiteracy affects what reaches the stage.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, they say, and ignorance is bliss. Given the sharp decline of arts education in American public schools in recent decades, opera companies across the land have no choice but to test the truth of those propositions. Increasingly, U.S. audiences are musical illiterates who only listen, barely capable (if at all) of reading music, incapable of making any sort of music on their own.

And what are the consequences? Is the biodiversity of the operatic ecosphere on the point of collapse? Are Wozzeck and Lulu, Moses und Aron, Palestrina and Mathis der Maler, not to speak of the complete Janacek and Britten and other acquired tastes, ...