It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.

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.

I was encouraged by my mother and, to a lesser extent, by my father.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice.

It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.