Audio amplification also exists on operatic stages, even very prominent [1]. Moreover, you can get very good, wonderful, excellent recordings of basically any classical opera, both old and modern performances, for a pretty acceptable price. For watching, you can have pretty captivating video recordings with really good sound.
It's still a niche product compared to recordings of, say, Taylor Swift (who is also an excellent performer).
[1]: https://thespaces.com/sydney-opera-house-emerges-with-a-whol...
Yes but the performance practice is way different. Modern pop singing uses a "crooning" performance style that's totally unfeasible without the modern
microphone and electric amplification. Even musicals singers can afford to clearly "belt out" their tunes without dangerously straining their voice, because it will always get amplified as a matter of course. Opera singers don't have that luxury.
Isn't that mostly just a change in technology? Taylor Swift and Whitney Houston have to sing into microphones that amplify their voice electrically, whereas opera singers obviously don't; they just sing the way public singing was done for much of recorded history. To some extent, the point of opera and classical music (which also features unamplified instruments) is a kind of historical reenactment; of keeping performance practices alive that have a very long history of their own.