Look, dude, I don't know anything about you or your woman. I'm not trying to pick on you, just to use your post as an example of how absurd this entire phenomenon is of singers either being stupid or lazy or both. You said this:
"My search on google proved unhelpful in locating where in Tristan Brangane's Tower scene is located. It was recommended to my girlfriend and I'm trying to locate it so that when I can go to the library I'm not pawing through the score like an idiot. Can someone tell me Act and Scene and what the first line of this scene is?"
Let's try to fill in the story here. This guy's girlfriend is presumably a singer. She knows someone who is either another singer, a teacher, a coach, or someone in the industry. This person said "hey, you know what you should try---Brangane's arioso, some people call it the 'Tower scene.' It's from Tristan und Isolde." Girlfriend is game.
What's her next step?
Well, if it's this guy's girlfriend, the answer is not to try google. It's not even to ask someone. It's not even to ask the freaking person who recommended it to her!!!!---"where in Tristan is that?" On top of that, not only does she not search it out herself, she asks HER BOYFRIEND TO FIND IT FOR HER. She asks him either to find out where it is, or to go the library and find it. He has no clue where it is. So he comes to NFCS and asks.
Wow. Really?
In theory, it's cool that he wants to help out his girlfriend, but I honestly don't see the difference between this and someone coming home from the office and throwing a bunch of files at their significant other and saying "do this for me." In fact, it's even worse. Either this person doesn't care enough to go look it up, doesn't think she CAN look it up, or thinks it's not her job. Or all of the above.
I've already gone into detail about not using basic internet functions to find incredibly easy stuff. The Fidelio example from earlier today was one of the most egregious examples of that. But this gets at the very root of the problem---people just being too damn lazy or not caring. Honestly, I don't really hear many "great" young voices lately. That's bad enough. But if you neither have a stunning voice NOR have good work ethic, your career is over before it starts. I can think of lots of singers who are famous and have decent voices but nothing to blow you away. But they worked hard, they studied, they sought out all pieces of knowledge of a given aria, piece, opera, whatever---and they earned that reputation and made their way up. What are you going to do when you have neither? even if your voice IS great, why would anyone hire you if you don't even care to do basic, basic, basic research? you can check your email a hundred times a day, you can burn DVDs and route networks, but you can't search for something on Google? and when you do have something you need to find out about, you pass it off to your boyfriend?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!
I don't even know what to say. I'm hoping there is something going on here that makes this understandable (maybe his girlfriend is blind and can't figure it out on her own?), but even if this case is an exception, I hear things like this all the time and wonder who is going to be left to sing in ten or fifteen years.