Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.
Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.
If I felt that one of my operas did not come off I would certainly say so.
I was encouraged by my mother and, to a lesser extent, by my father.
I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.
Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.