Vandersteen

..just finished listening to Carman (Bernstein, Horn) on my Vandersteen 5A’s/all Ayre electronics with VPI Superscout/rimdrive/classic platter/3D arm/Ortofon Winfield cart......Its like you were right there. (The orchestra was clearly mic’d better than the singers, (soloists all had their own)....but quite wonderful. There is no kind of music that requires good equipment than does big scale opera.

I can understand the OP point-of-view.  Vandys are not bad, at all.
Careful gear and cabling matching are paramount. As much as I enjoyed the "2" series, I went w/ Thiel. Specifically, the CS 2.4SE loudspeakers.
These do not falter on any musical genre. Happy Listening!

Jafant
As you should at 4 x the price of ordinary 2's
And as you are very well aware, Jim T ( RIP ) is a designer prehaps the designer most aligned with Richard on basic design parameters and philosophy...

And Theils Jim's anyway are -/$&@! Fine speakers

Johnny R., hate to disappoint you, but I'm not on Tyler's payroll. Again, my only beef with the Vandies (other than price) is that at least in my listening room, you have a very limited "sweet spot," off-axis of which you're missing their true value. Here's what I got for the 100 percent dealer mark-up:
I had to fly the guy over from Seattle to Spokane (at my expense) and back, and spring for lunch plus drive 360 miles of driving from Spokane to where we live and back. He spent about 5 minutes with a $10 Radium Shack dosimeter optimizing the speaks, then the rest of the day trying to push a billion-dollar set of Audioquest speaker cables and interconnects on me. The Vandies benefit immensely from bi-wiring, even at the Blue Jeans Cable level, and placement relative to the back wall and toe-in/toe-out can work wonders. No flies on them, but I would put Tylers' Highlands of Decade D12x's up against the 5AC carbons any old day. Insofar as speakers are probably the most subjective of components in a good sound system, and I sure haven't heard 'em all so I'm no expert. Suffice to say I'm happy with what I've got now and won't be looking for something different anytime soon.