do online music subscription companies and itunes carry original libretti for opera?

Question by whatnow: do online music subscription companies and itunes carry original libretti for opera?
I want to subscribe to online music web sites and itunes (purchase) for opera music but I am reluctant to do so because regular opera cds usually provide original artwork that also contains the libretto (translation of the work in English). Would napster, rhapsody, zune, and itunes supply the libretto or is that something that I would have to obtain from cds?

Best answer:

Answer by Truth
This from the LA Times-December 7, 2008 (interesting date) |MARK SWED, MUSIC CRITIC

The DVD, the most common format for new opera releases, will not include a libretto and, in some cases, even a synopsis, since subtitles are supplied. Some opera CD’s no longer come with librettos. Downloading services such as iTunes are not in the text business.

There are benefits to the dearth of printed words

Breaking the link between listener and language has caused a radical reshaping of our relationship to the art form. Without grounding in the language of opera, we tend to approach it more as a narrative experience than a poetic one. Contemporary opera goers expect from the lyric stage the same sort of immediate experience they have at the theater and cinema.

That means that staging has gotten a lot better over the last few decades. Opera, after all, is drama. And I’m not sure anyone’s time is best spent poring over the original French lines of a 19th century historical oddity such as Meyerbeer’s “L’Africaine,” in which the librettist confused India with
Africa. . .

Another art bites the dust!

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