First of all, congratulations on the recent premiere of your opera Winter Journey.

It was a great experience to be there in Palermo, and there’s another performance in March in Italy, in Napoli. It’s the same production but with a different orchestra and choir, with the Teatro di San Carlo in Napoli.

Ludovico Einaudi

You’re perhaps best known for your writing for small forces, for piano and small ensemble. What inspired you to write an opera?

Of course when you are composing there’s always the desire to do different things, and for a composer, I would say, writing for theatre, it’s a big, beautiful and interesting challenge. It’s very much a collaborative exchange with other artists. You are collaborating with a writer, with a director, with a stage designer, and it’s an incredible machine. When it’s rolling it’s really fantastic, because all the balances between the elements are beautiful to see.

What were the most important things you learned through the process of writing?

The idea of making this opera, this specific opera, [was] a consequence of the situation that we have in Italy, and in Europe, I would say, at the moment – it’s a...