It was the result of a conversation that Magdalena [Kvozená] and I had. She’s a wonderful singer and I asked her what piece she’d really like to do, rather than be asked to do. She told me that she’d done Paride, which has a wonderful part for her that she loved singing. It’s very light and not a great opera, but it does have some beautiful music in it and is well worth doing because it’s the least known of the ‘reform’ operas. I love Gluck precisely because it is not baroque music and it is not classical music—it belongs to that transitional period. I find it so fascinating that there are only forty years or so between the B minor Mass and The Magic Flute, yet you have this extraordinary change of musical texture and style.

And there’s so much good music from that period.

Absolutely. Take Boccherini, who to my horror I know virtually nothing of. I was recently listening to him on BBC’s Radio 3 Composer of the Week and was amazed at the quality of the music. And then there are people like Jommelli… But this takes me back to the sad fact that English period instrument groups are desperately limited in what we can actually do. Even with a star like Magdalena Kvozená, it is very difficult for me to sell an unknown Gluck opera because it is so expensive to tour. And that’s why we’re at a direct disadvantage to French groups, who can do things because they’re subsidised. If they want to do an obscure piece of Lully or Jommelli there’s a much better chance of them finding the funding to do it. Twenty years ago the innovation of British early music groups made them the most sought after in the world, but now there’s this catch 22 situation of endlessly repeating the same repertoire with ever-smaller forces. I feel very worried about the future. Where, for example, is the next generation of directors coming from? Where are the up and coming twenty-something directors? Half the problem is that there is no support mechanism. It’s quite different to Emmanuele Haïm suddenly appearing and getting, seemingly, half the French national product to support her conducting! So in the UK there’s this blockage in the system and although I’m sure we have plenty of good musicians out there, there’s no way they can do what I did, which was basically to risk to my house to develop a group. Or maybe they’re just not hungry enough.

Returning to opera, I would guess you have views on production.