This is why I want to write weird musicals.

Q: You've said that opera has always been about the gods. What exactly did you mean by that?

PETER SELLARS: Well ... human beings need permission, and usually that's metaphor, to recognize that there are many layers of reality moving at any given moment, and that every small gesture has very large consequences. So opera is this amazing form, which takes a gesture, and understands it through music, poetry, dance, visual art, all at the same time.

"The artist's work is to lift people out of their usual sense of their own cosmos into a higher vision of what's going on up there."

A whole galaxy is in place around these four actions. You thought you were just writing a letter to someone, but in fact, there was a whole symphony orchestra playing. In fact there was a chorus singing. In fact, it's like a bigger deal. Opera constantly gives you that perspective shift; that glimpse of spiritual activity inside of the simplest and quietest moments.

From here.