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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.

When you conduct opera, you control the stage. But with a film, the film controls you.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

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.

Art is all about the experience. I could say I don't really relate to opera, but then you watch Placido Domingo, and you go, 'Blimey, look at that.'

Sometimes, going to see one opera is hard because you don't know the genre. Good opera is like good wine. There are so many varieties, and it helps to inform you about what you like when you see a lot.

As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.

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.

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.