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

I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.

Perhaps the most difficult thing is shooting scenes set 6,000 feet up in the mountains of Mexico.

There were movies that always made me want to be a director. You see brilliant scenes and the way the emotions were handled. I thought, I'd really like to do that.

It is essential to do everything possible to attract young people to opera so they can see that it is not some antiquated art form but a repository of the most glorious music and drama that man has created.

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.

At HBO, they seem to be well-informed. They make what I think are really quite mature films.