No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when

Hear the voice of W. H. Auden, poet of the modern age, who proclaimed: “No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” At first, his words seem wrapped in jest, but beneath the humor lies wisdom as old as the human heart. For what is opera but the magnification of emotion, the heightening of life into sound so great it cannot be spoken? Auden, with his keen eye for truth, reminds us that when men are consumed with love, despair, rage, or ecstasy, they transcend reason and speak in song.

The first truth in this saying is that sensibility belongs to the realm of the ordinary. In daily life, we speak plainly, act modestly, and move with restraint. But opera is not ordinary. It is the art of extremes—where a lover cries out in rapture, where a warrior thunders his vow, where a betrayed heart wails against the heavens. These are not the actions of the sensible, but of the passionate, for it is passion that gives rise to music. Sensibility whispers; passion sings.

Auden’s words also reveal that song itself is the language of the soul unchained. No man sings when his heart is calm and measured. He sings when the soul is overflowing, when ordinary speech can no longer contain the fire within. Thus, the opera plot must abandon the straight lines of common logic and embrace the tangled, tumultuous path of human longing. For in music, it is not reason that rules, but emotion, and it is through emotion that truth is revealed.

History gives us a noble example in Verdi’s La Traviata. Its story of forbidden love and tragic sacrifice is not sensible by the standards of sober logic. Why should a courtesan give up her love? Why should her heart, once aflame, be extinguished by society’s demands? Yet audiences weep, for the music carries them into the depths of human suffering and the heights of human devotion. The tale may not be sensible, but it is true to the passions of the heart. And therein lies its power.

So too with Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The tale of a libertine dragged to hell by his own excesses stretches the limits of plausibility, yet its music burns with fire eternal. The story may not follow the rules of common reason, but its emotional truth transcends those rules. The laughter, the seductions, the terror—all find their rightful place in music. This is what Auden teaches: that opera, and indeed all great art, thrives not in the reasonable, but in the realm of the soul’s deepest cry.

What lesson, then, shall we draw? That to live only by sensibility is to live small. Reason may guide the path, but it is passion that makes the journey worth taking. When the heart is stirred, when the spirit is ablaze, we, too, must dare to sing—whether in song, in art, in speech, or in the bold actions of life. Sensible lives are safe, but they are silent. Passionate lives may seem illogical, but they are remembered, for they echo like opera through the ages.

Practical wisdom follows: do not fear the moments when you feel beyond reason. When love overwhelms you, when grief breaks you, when joy overflows—do not silence it. Express it. Write, paint, sing, speak, live with that same courage. Let your life contain its own arias and crescendos, its own bold leaps into the unreasonable beauty of passion. For in these moments, you live most truly, and those around you are moved by the song of your being.

Thus remember Auden’s teaching: “No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” Let it remind you that greatness lies not in sterile reason alone, but in the courage to give voice to the passions of your soul. For though reason builds the walls of the house, it is passion that fills it with song. And it is the song that endures.