Working with Dani Howard on The Yellow Wallpaper was different again. I had a strong sense of wanting to do a chamber opera of The Yellow Wallpaper . I had written a play version of it long ago, but then not done anything with it because I kept thinking: why not just reread the story? Then I realised that what you need to show on stage is the idea of the woman behind the wallpaper, without it being too twee. That’s the origin of my concept for a piece for singer and dancer. The dancer is the alter ego , the other side of the woman, or the other woman: however you interpret it. I knew that I wanted minimal or- chestration or instrumentation: single voice; single danc- er. I had seen Dani’s first opera and heard some of her other music, brought to me through a Dulwich connec- tion – the Multi-Story Orchestra, founded by Chris Stark OA and the composer Kate Whitley. They introduced me to Dani, with whom I shared the idea of The Yellow Wallpaper , and she loved the conceit. I also knew which singer I wanted. I had been talking to Clare Presland for a number of years about it, having seen most of her work since she graduated from music college, and I knew which production company I wanted to use: The Opera Story, set up by Hamish Mackay, whose career I had also followed. Hamish brought in the pianist, the cellist, the dancer and the director, people he knew. It felt, in a small-scale way, like Wagnerian total theatre: a company in which everybody trusted each other, believed in the vision and carried it through. The modus operandi with Dani was that she would ask me to describe what I thought the mood should be at each point, taking notes from that, and this gave us a clear sense of the story arc. Gradually, I realised that my job seemed to be (and I loved this) to take more and more out of the original story and leave space for the music to tell that story. That, I think, is key to the writing for opera, and notably chamber opera: you can say so little whilst still carrying the story, because you trust the composer to use music to tell the story too. I think the other thing I found working with Dani is that there comes a moment when the librettist hands over Gradually, I realised that my job seemed to be to take more and more out of the original story and leave space for the music to tell that story
process; we seemed to have the same sort of ideas and vision for both music and text. We enjoyed hearing the premiere of De Profundis in New York, in a church whose organist, Daniel Hyde, had been at Oakham. As we were looking towards the celebration of the Shackleton centenary, and with my time in Antarctica in prospect, I was taken with the story of the ‘White Road’, in which Shackleton feels the presence of the ‘other’ as he walks across South Georgia. I had begun working with the idea, thinking, at one stage, that I might turn it into a chamber opera, but ultimately, the sparseness of stand- alone song suited it better. I gave Cecilia my text of The White Road , with its fusion of Shackleton and TS Eliot, and she worked on it. With Shackleton and Chandler and EA Wodehouse, we realised that we had effective- ly created a trilogy of pieces with OAs engaged in the 1914–18 conflict in some way. It now looks as if they will be recorded together, so that has been a lovely accident. Coming up to date, we now have in prospect the first col- laboration where Cecilia might take a piece of mine in its own right: ‘At Grytviken’ is a poem I wrote in Antarctica, and at the moment we are looking for the right com- missioner. Cecilia is the most generous, thoughtful and sensitive person to work with. When she has had an idea and has wanted to change the emphasis of something, it has usually proved right, but she has also been very open to listening to ideas which emerge. DK: Given the strength of that working relationship, was it a difficult adjustment when you were looking at work- ing with other composers for Puer Pacis and The Yellow Wallpaper ? JS: It was a great help to have had a good long-standing working relationship with a major composer like Ce- cilia before working with Nico Muhly ( Puer Pacis ) and then Dani Howard ( The Yellow Wallpaper ). It gave me a certain confidence and a sense of how we could work, leading to equally happy experiences. The Nico Muhly commission was a wonderful piece of luck, arising from an auction in which the opportunity was won to have Nico set some text to music. I sent Nico my text, about which he was very complimentary, and then he took it away and delivered the work. I think that this was more reflective of the world of professional music: you get your com- mission, and you don’t necessarily have a long-standing relationship with the institution or the individuals you are working with.
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