I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.

In retrospect, I'm really shocked at how far I put my heart out there on the line with 'Prima Donna'. I seem to have this knack for being able to accomplish that.

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.

The pop world is popular, and it's about what the people want and connecting to the masses, whereas opera, although it was once popular - and I still believe it can be - it has become very elitist and intellectual, but that certainly doesn't sell tickets. It's a struggle, but I've always embraced struggle and thrived off of it, so it's the way my life needs to go.

I'll always be a boulevardier. I have an extreme reverence and romantic longing for all that is decrepit and fatalistic.

I'm very much a romantic. I'm highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We're not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.