HOWZAT

Well, when you look at a symphony orchestra, and the sort of people who might want to conduct them, it’s bound to attract somebody with a wild ego. Von Karajan, I guess, would be a good example.

Are maestros known as womanisers?

Not particularly, and there is a lot of dramatic convention in this piece. Especially with Charles humiliating, forgiving and seducing a woman, all in one afternoon! That’s beyond the bounds of realism.

So, did you have to ditch your original idea about the opera being realistic?

I don’t think so, but what I did discover is that, once you hear your words being sung, you turn up the volume on the characters and make them more colourful. The hubris of Charles got a bit overstated.

But I did try to write something more like a play, in measured prose.

The bits where the characters all sing over the top of each other can hardly be described as measured . . .

I know, but I just love those ensemble passages where everybody is singing different lines together. Rossini and Mozart are brilliant at getting as many as six characters on stage, all singing different words with different emotional tones. I said to Michael, “Why don’t composers do this more often?” And he said, “Because it’s incredibly difficult.” But he was really up for it. I love the end of Act One, when Charles is failing to have sex with Joan, and it’s a no-show, and just when they finally get going, in comes Maria, interrupting them and forcing them apart with food. . . then there’s his assistant worrying about a score. . . then in comes his wife.

As in Atonement, Enduring Love and On Chesil Beach, the plot here hinges on a terrible misunderstanding. Why is that such a potent device for you?

I like that cognitive moment of dissonance when people are so persuaded by something they want to believe that they see or hear differently. It’s like those well-meaning people who chose not to notice Stalin’s pact with the Nazis, or the gulags. We’re almost defined as a species by our willingness to misunderstand. We get the wrong end of the stick because we want to, because it suits us. On a more mechanical level, it’s a good cog in a plot, and in this opera it makes for some of the best musical moments. There’s a lovely piece Maria sings when she thinks Charles reciprocates her feelings, a completely self-deluding song in which she thinks he is commanding her to murder his wife. All of which is wrong. And instead of writing something harsh, Michael has written this piercingly beautiful melody with just a harp. It’s the show stopper, actually.

Would you like to write another opera with Michael?

I’d actually quite like to write a musical with him. Musicals have gone off in a rather bland and saccharine direction recently, and I think it might be interesting to recover the Brecht-Weill aesthetic, do something a bit more edgy. I’ve got such confidence in Michael’s ability. He can turn in a beautiful lyric melody that is not just Schubert revisited, it’s a modern melody. He just has to come up with 12 songs that people cleaning windows will still be whistling in 300 years’ time!

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