It's an attempt to do speaking opera. What I'm doing can work against the melodrama and the music, and parody the melodrama. In the love scenes, the men are picked up by the women ? the men are swept off their feet ? so I can get a lot of comedy from it. It's a comedy of opposition.

Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world.

This certainly steals an acting style that was used in the clubs in Munich in 1900 and picked up by (playwright Bertolt) Brecht. We associate it, and rightly so, with some of the high melodrama that was used for silent films. So sometimes, with this style of acting and the piano in the background, you get the idea that you're in a silent film melodrama.

Ibsen wrote a kind of Times best seller; he wasn't 100 years ahead of his time -- he was 10 years ahead. It was the feminist anthem of its time -- the YMCA of feminism.

I feel that people who would think it goes too far don't understand what the intent is. One has to build a bridge to the present.

In any case, the task of finding fresh approaches to opera and to choral music will be inherited by the future.