Sidney, Chiara, how did the idea of writing a children’s opera together come about?

Sidney Corbett I’d been wanting to write one for a long time. I love writing for children, and it requires a special approach to the music, because you’re thinking in primary colours. It’s got to be clear and simple and precise and unnuanced. Also: I didn’t want to set an existing text to music; it had to be created from scratch. Chiara came up with the OCTOPUS LADY idea. The actual story dates back to when she was 12. I’d taken her with me on a concert tour and the surrealist pictures hanging on the walls of the hotel made a strong impression on her and she filled her diary with pictures. She had a house with breathing walls, a biting door knob, and an Octopus Lady making mischief.

Chiara Corbett I still like the way there’s so much going on in my house that things come alive and get given a voice. When we plumped on using the text as a basis for a libretto, I set about developing a storyline, and then there was the big question of what age children we were targeting. I lowered the age of the main character to six and asked myself what kind of things scared me at that age.

What things did?

Sidney Corbett The story has a child sleeping by herself in a room of her own for the very first time. That’s a major event in the life of a child, because it’s the first time that parental protection can’t be instantly summoned up. You have to face down your fears and nightmares and the darkness all on your own.

What helps you face them down?

Chiara Corbett At the end of the day, only your empirical awareness that nothing will happen to you, that the gruesome thoughts are only in your head and are not going to come true. Personally, I’ve always found it a help to have people keeping me company.

Sidney Corbett I’m 64 years old and still have my pet scares. It’s part and parcel of being human. But I think it’s important as parents to be there for children and to let them know that our door is always open if they need to hash stuff out.

Chiara, you wrote the text and your dad wrote the music. How did your collaboration play out?

Chiara Corbett My father was always going on about how it was a good story and could be turned into an opera. It was because of him that I took the plunge. He was on my side and believed in me. And if something musical occurs to me, I’ll text him: »A good time for some dance music« or »Set to the octopus theme.« Not that I’m always sure it’ll work out, but then Sid’ll say something like »Have more belief in the power of the music! You don’t understand how powerful music is.«

Sidney, what kind of music do you write?

Sidney Corbett New Music with a contemporary kind of tonality. And I stand by that description. My music comes to me in sounds and I’m alert to how they relate to one another. I’m not frightened of tonality as such, but for me every note can be illuminated from a number of angles, as a way of kind of creating »illusions«. The music contains something that is open to description in the same way that a feeling is. Tonality means there are places that we’re familiar with but where we’ve not yet been. Ligeti, my teacher, once said: »You know the old music is dead, but the new music is dead too.« And there’s the rub: we’ve got to compose stuff that’s up-to-date and relatable to. That doesn’t mean we should be deleting our memories. In fact, I consciously lean into them.

OCTOPUS LADY doesn’t feature any characters who are out-and-out bad. Did you both shy away from that or was it precisely the ambiguity of the protagonists that you wanted?

Chiara Corbett It’s uncertainty that scares Elli, not evil. After all, fear of the dark is actually the fear that something is lurking that you failed to notice in daylight. I’m trying to show how, by facing up to something head-on, we can come to realise that the unknown is often not as bad as we might think.

Sidney Corbett For me there’s no such thing as black and white in the first place. Not in music and not with people. I think of art as an opportunity to portray the world in all its diversity, nuances and contradictions.

How would you describe the work in three words?

Sidney Corbett Discovery, acceptance, curiosity.

Chiara Corbett Dreamy, whacky, adventurous.