Interviews by Imogen Tilden. "When English National Opera asked me to conduct Mozart's Magic Flute in 1988, I said I'd do it with [director] Nick Hytner but nobody else. I'd been involved in many productions of the opera before, and I told Nick and designer Bob Crowley at our first meeting that I always wished the directors and designers wouldn't run out of ideas early. There's usually great imagination in the early scenes – the snake, the Queen of the Night, Papageno's birds, but very little left for the second half. Nick laughed, and came up with a brilliant second act."
