Opera, perhaps more than any other live art form, is perennially declared to be in terminal decline, and yet its greatest (0) SINGERS (SING) still fill houses on every continent. Detractors routinely dismiss the genre as 1ELITE, pointing to ticket prices that exclude all but the comfortably off, while its defenders counter that much of what is most 2ACCLAIM about the form — its psychological depth, its musical range, its capacity to dignify extreme emotion — simply cannot be replicated in cheaper media. The art is undeniably 3DEMAND: staging it requires orchestras, choruses, elaborate sets and soloists of rare calibre, which is why most major houses remain heavily 4SUBSIDY. Recent 5PRODUCE have drawn criticism from 6TRADITION who find contemporary directors too eager to reset classic works in dystopian warehouses, while others welcome precisely such 7MODERN interventions as evidence that the canon still breathes. Whatever one's view, the renewed 8POPULAR of opera among younger listeners — documented by streaming services as much as by box-office returns — suggests that reports of its demise have, yet again, been premature.