My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Music and opera are a big part of my life.
Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.
People perceive opera and classical as elitist - I disagree. I've always tried to mix the two, make it more accessible.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.
Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.
For years, I wasn't in the least bit interested in opera.
I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto.
To this day, I adore classical music, and I'm very interested in opera, which I found out later my father was also extremely fond of.
My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.