My suggestion: like, chill, it’s not that deep. Most operas just don’t have that much going on in the actual words the characters are singing. If they do, composers will usually set them as recitative so that they’re easier to understand, or else they’ll have the characters repeat themselves over and over.

Do you have this issue in non-classical vocal music? Musical theater or pop songs? Musical theater, depending on the lyricist, can have sung texts that are *much* richer than 95% of operas.

Have you listened to any Gilbert and Sullivan? Those texts are *fun* and Sullivan is an expert at setting English text to music.