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I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

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.

Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.

I like the idea of people coming to opera for the first time and finding it an enjoyable experience. I don't like the fact that opera is seen as elitist and all black ties and that stuff.

I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience.

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.

In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film.

The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.