Joseph Horowitz, looking back at what U.S. opera houses were before the 20th century (smaller, more eclectic, and more popular), argues that the size of the Met’s auditorium, along with the company’s outsize influence, has led to “a presiding notion of opera giving priority to big voices hurled into big spaces, singing words in foreign tongues set by deceased European composers … a notion of ‘grand opera’ that is increasingly unsustainable.”