The next time you hear someone say, as is the wont of arts grandees and TV controllers, that dumbing down is a myth, I have a suggestion. Take them to the Coliseum in London, the home of English National Opera (ENO), where next year they will be able to witness dumbing down in action, above the stage of a once great opera company.

Even if you have not the slightest interest in opera, the decision of ENO to lower its standards, in the apparent belief that its audience is comprised of idiots, is a metaphor for our times.

The founding principle of ENO, since its creation in 1931, has been the performance of opera in English. For decades, audiences have benefited from the dramatic immediacy and unique level of theatricality and communication this brings to performances.

No longer. So garbled are the sounds which now emanate from singers’ mouths that audiences are finding it difficult to make head or tail of their words. As a regular at the Coliseum for more than 25 years, I can corroborate this. Where I once had no difficulty understanding, today the sounds are so often unintelligible that the artists may as well be singing in Swedish.

The response of the artistic director of ENO, Séan Doran, is to introduce surtitles, so that audiences will be able to read the words the singers are trying to communicate.

It is almost impossible to think of a less apposite response. Against stiff competition, Mr Doran’s decision is a perfect example of our age’s warped intellectual values.

The problem is straightforward: the singers’ diction is poor. The solution is equally simple: return to the clarity of diction which was once taken as standard. The result: standards would rise, and everyone would be happy.

But no. Mr Doran appears to believe that the problem lies with the audience, which he clearly considers to be too stupid to understand sung English. And so, instead of returning to the basics — teaching singers to communicate in English once again — ENO has introduced a solution that can only exacerbate the problem.

Surtitles will make proper teaching even less necessary, since singers will be able to mumble away without worrying whether audiences understand them.

If it is not schools or universities dumbing down, it is opera companies. Woe.