Old people's words

Particularly with something closer to opera, I think writing my own words wouldn't help, and it's a way of borrowing some life experience. Everyone has a bunch of opinions as to why most libretti seem to suck, but I don't think there's really an answer to that: it's about the strength of the creative force within that particular group of individuals at a particular time. The beauty of opera, to me, is that - even with all the elaborate pretensions - there's still some primal form of communication. A symphony isn't the same, but neither is a musical with body mics. Something I've noticed is that a lot of opera composers begin to write their own libretti, or become more involved in editing the text, when they get older. Very different kettle of fish to writing a song lyric...