For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.

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

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

I thought, This is fabulous. It sent shivers up my spine. I thought, What kinds of people are these that would produce this kind of music in a camp? All the prison camp stories I've seen, and heard of, were about the heroism of men. As I researched this and heard the music, I realized that women were heroic too, on just as grand a scale. And their treatment was just as appalling.

In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films.