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Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while.

I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.

I love to conduct opera.

Opera is really fun.

The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.

I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera.

Opera is an exclusive art form, so it cannot be that popular. I just do what I love to do.