“Opera as a collaborative process”: a conversation with Guildhall’s Opera Makers

“Opera could still have a more direct connection to people. It’s a powerful form. So the real question is, are we just preserving it as a tradition or are we using it as a living, creative, effective tool? That’s what we need to keep asking.”

Sorena Sabah

Guildhall’s 2024-25 Opera Makers are a group of six composers and librettists currently undertaking the MA in Opera Making and Writing course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Spearheaded by Guildhall Head of Composition, Julian Philips and Head of Opera Studies, Dominic Wheeler, the course aims to provide librettists and composers with insight into the process of working on a new opera. Over the course of the year, three librettists and three composers have been paired up to create new chamber operas of 25 minutes, to be performed on 27th June to 2nd July 2025 at Milton Court Studio Theatre, London, as part of Guildhall’s Making It Festival — a three-week celebration of new, original work made by Guildhall School’s vibrant and multi-skilled community of artists.

The 2024-25 cohort — consisting of librettists Adi Denner, Jess McNulty, and Sophia Trewick, and composers Mary Offer, Sam Meredith, and Sorena Sabah — have spent the past year creating three new chamber operas: Strings of Rebellion (Adi and Mary),  Alexander and the Tree (Jess and Sorena), and Gef! (Sophia and Sam); demonstrating new insights into opera-making from both a writing and composition perspective. Different backgrounds and experiences of both mediums amongst the group portrayed the variety, scope and possibility of making a new operatic work.

Ahead of the operas’ premieres at Milton Court Studio Theatre, Georgie West sat down with the Opera Makers to discuss opera as a collaborative process, the origins and new meanings of the art, the experiences of long-form writing and what the three groups have created.

Georgie/PRXLUDES: You’re currently in rehearsals for/preparing for your operas, which are taking place between 27 June-2 July at Milton Court Studio Theatre. How are you finding the rehearsal process, and how are you feeling about this stage of the Opera Makers course?

Sorena Sabah: The rehearsal process, I would say, is intense, but in a really good way. Being in the rehearsal room with everyone seeing how things shift and grow, it’s really alive. I’ve learned to stay open to adjust and to really listen (at least I’ve tried my best!). It’s a mix of excitement and stress sometimes, but mostly I feel lucky. It’s rare to be part of something that is so collaborative at this level.


Sophia Trewick: I think it’s a really exhilarating stage — this first week of getting the work up on its feet, and the singers, the director, and the conductor exploring the work in the space. The stage before the rehearsals began felt like a manifestation of that thing where when you are inside of a work and you can’t really see the wood for the trees. So going into rehearsals feels a bit like vertigo, where suddenly I’m looking at the work from a new angle that I haven’t seen before — and when other people suddenly see your work and have their own responses, it is both terrifying, but also really exciting.

Jess McNulty: I feel slightly like a parent sending their kid off to school… -laughs- Because you have been very much in play, it’s been very much your baby for quite a while as a [composer-librettist] pair and then you have to be like “here you go”. Sitting in on a rehearsal where everyone was really psychoanalysing all the characters and the movements of them was slightly surreal; obviously, you do that as a writer and as a composer — you really pick apart that character — but this was the first time (for me anyway) that someone external was doing that to something that I had written, which was quite amazing. 

Adi Denner: I find this stage really exciting — especially because I know what it’s like to be on the singer’s side during this stage. It’s quite a different point of view to be the one behind the work, and not the one that is interpreting the work and forming it. I am very excited to see how they interpret it. In this situation, I definitely do want to be a part of seeing how the singers interpret things, seeing how they connect with the work and also being there for them if they have any questions.

Georgie: Librettists, how did you all discover opera and libretto writing?

Jess: I come from a more musical background. I did my undergrad as a flute player at Guildhall, but I didn’t really know what opera was before starting conservatoire. I played in the Guildhall opera in third year and I just found the whole thing really cool. You have to be a lot more reactive and responsive, you can’t really switch off because everything changes depending on what is going on on stage.

Growing up I always wrote a lot — lots of poems and spoken word nights during my undergrad — but it was always more of a hobby. Then in 4th year there was a creative writing course as an elective, and I wrote a libretto based on the Greek myth of Medusa; and Stephen [Plaice] very subtly urged me to apply for the course. It was a combination of both my creative practices in one! What I love most about music is the way that it can express emotions but also stories. For a lot of my pieces, especially solo rep, I always come up with some sort of  narrative or thread going through it, and that makes the music make sense for me. 

Adi: A bit like Jess, I also have a musical background but as an opera singer. I have a masters degree in opera singing and I am also an author. I write fantasy books and my debut novel was about a character who becomes an opera singer by using her magic! I have always basically looked for ways to connect my passions, and then I started looking into writing text for operas — thinking about what if I wanted to turn one of my short stories into an opera? I started looking online for courses and I found out that this was the only course that offered that type of knowledge… -laughs- So it was very clear to me the moment that I found it that I wanted to do this. 

Sophia: My background isn’t musical, it is based in theatre. I also similarly always enjoyed writing, but the main focus was performing and directing. The thing that I really love about theatre is how collaborative it is; how much of the work is formulated by the coming together of multiple different people’s imaginations. I knew very little about opera growing up, but as I started to gain more insight into what it was, I realised it actually is a form which is completely rooted in the spirit of collaboration. I was really excited to learn how to write for music, and to experience working closely with a composer from the beginning of a project, because sometimes writing can be quite a solitary craft — whereas in opera making that is not necessarily the case.

Georgie: And composers, what drew you to opera and subsequently the course?

Sam Meredith: I did Guildhall undergrad composition and I was aware of Opera Makers through that. I think seeing the sort of close-quarters combat of opera in that space was just very exciting and novel. I kind of wanted to write a piece that had that short, fire intensity and was only 25 minutes — well, only 25 minutes… -laughs- I think it is a good test, and one that I wanted to put my energies into after an undergrad course writing lots of shorter pieces. I wanted to see what it was like to write a more extended work. It does get put under the microscope a lot on the course, so you have to spend time [with it] — and it develops in a different way to how you develop other pieces that you have to write in a quicker amount of time.

Mary Offer: My previous practice has been very much based in collaboration with performers, but also very much with writers. The amount of collaboration on this course appealed to me as a concept. I developed a couple of songs during my masters at the [Royal] Academy where I was working with a soprano/librettist, so it was really fun to create a whole new project together where we both conceived and developed it; and so it has been really nice to be able to do the same thing in a way on this course, but in a much more developed style. I am very interested in how music fits with text — particularly in choral music as well — so it has been interesting to develop that into a large scale project in opera form. You have so many stages to it; you have to initially develop the concept with your librettists, and then you have to create the libretto and then draft the vocal score and orchestrate. It feels like such a multi stage, all-encompassing process.

Sorena: What really drew me to Opera Makers was the chance to work in a team with composers, writers, singers, directors, all in one room. I come from a background where I worked with classical music, electronic stuff, orchestral writing, but this course really pushed me to think differently. 
It made me realise how powerful collaboration can be — practically, not just in theory. And that’s something I’m definitely taking with me into my future work. I had worked with voice and theatre separately before, but never a full opera project from beginning to end.

We have a princess who doesn’t want to be a damsel in distress anymore; she wants to go out into the world and be free to be who she is. She has this moment in the opera where she kind of starts to “glitch”, and she thinks “I’ve never actually asked myself, what do I want?”. We have a prince who’s just a tragic character because he believes he’s doing the right thing. He believes in this whole sense of truth that’s manipulated by the puppet master.

So, there are these people who are being controlled by a force that’s completely outside of their own control. That was a really interesting idea to play with, musically; because you can create the sense of this evil witch with all these brassy cackles, and then you can create the sense of this beautiful princess with these dainty damsel-like figures using harp, flute and piccolo. Then, you can create the prince and his noble trumpet figures. You can really play with creating these stereotypical characters that then morph into something different when they become free of their constraints. I think that’s something that is potentially quite fun for the singers to play with, as well; pretending to be the princess and then being freed from that and becoming, you know, their own person.

Adi: The way that the rebellion unfolds, it tries to mirror how any rebellion in real life would unfold — with different ways of dealing with the situation. Some would very actively try to go and rebel, some would be more reluctant and fearful, and some would not even understand that they need to rebel, or would not understand that they are under any oppressive sort of control. So it sort of gives us this variety of responses to the situation — and the way that these characters interact with one another and influence each other’s viewpoints throughout this rebellion. That was something that was really important for both of us to let shine in the opera. 


And we imagined that Alexander — unable to accept what he hears — cuts the tree down, but in the end, the tree grows back. That image became a symbol of rebirth and the limits of human control.

At the centre of the story is humility. No matter who you are — king, conqueror, philosopher — we all return to the earth. 
The only thing that remains is your name, your legacy, your truth. There is a powerful line in the Shahnameh that says, which I translate: “Such is the custom of this harsh world, at times you sit in glory and at times thrown down by it”. That line guided me through the whole process. I wanted to write music that honoured that philosophy using Iranian modes and vocal writing that draws from our own singing traditions, rather than opera in the Western sense. 
It’s been a journey not just in composition, but in reconnecting with where I come from; and asking what kind of music I want to make going forward.

Jess: The blend of Iranian classical and Western classical music has been very interesting. Obviously Sorena’s Iranian, and I’m essentially British; so the accumulation of both our cultures within a story that has taken Western and Persian characters has been quite exciting.

The more I read about the case, the more intrigued I became. The story felt like it had so many nooks and crannies; it was kind of niche, but we discovered that there was also quite a large community of people who knew a lot about Gef or who had done extensive research. We were entering into a world that was already populated with theories and ideas but it was the unsolved and unfinished nature of the story that I found really enticing and exciting from the beginning. We had to, at some point, step away from the realm of research and into the realm of making creative and artistic choices about how we were going to tell the story. Our opera is about something small spiralling out of control to become something big, seen through the eyes of a young girl who is at the emotional heart of the piece.

Sam: Musically, my starting point for each character was the sort of “battles” that happen between each of them. 
The characters are pitted against each other; you have the kind of outsiders of Price and Lambert — the investigators who come and sort of “invade” the space — and then you have the young girl and the rest of the world. Her childish imagination pitted against the kind of ambitions of the adults was a very exciting contrast to go into musically. Fleshing out these characters in the rehearsal process has been really exciting — because they’re sort of blank slates in many ways, despite the historical routing of the story. It’s the clash that happens in this very tight space of a farmhouse which lent itself well to a chamber opera scenario.

Georgie: Working on one project for the whole year is quite a labour of love. How did your ideas first develop at the beginning of the course — and how has being devoted and focused on one project been for you?

Mary: Induction week was a very intensive experience. We developed multiple “mini-operas” over the course of the week and we got to [all] work with each other, which was really exciting. 
Each pair brought out a different side to your work; I felt like I was creating very different styles of music with so many different archetypes that had been given to us by Nazli [Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh]. It was incredibly exciting to see how your work evolves in different ways over the course of the week. 

I really enjoyed being in such a focused, intensive environment creating a piece in a space of a few hours or a few days. It’s very much like the complete opposite of developing an opera over the course of the year. It was really exciting to be kind of thrown in at the deep end, developing new ideas. I’ve written one opera before at Cambridge; and then this is quite different in a way, because you’re working with such a broad team of people. It has been intensive in a different sense of the word.
I suppose working on something over such a long period of time and being able to collaborate with somebody on it has been really all-encompassing.

Jess: The induction sets you up very well for the year. Like Mary was saying, it’s the complete opposite intensity of writing this chamber opera. 
I think for the writers it might be slightly different in terms of the intensity, because we had our intensity in the first term where we had to write the libretto. You then kind of have a little bit more breathing space from the project.

For me as well, making sure that my playing and my musical practice has been really steady throughout this year has been something that I’ve had to learn. I didn’t get the balance right at all at the start and that was quite overwhelming. 
I think I’ve now been able to balance them in a way that feels more natural. There is this kind of constant intensity of the project always being there, and feeling like: can I put my focus somewhere else or do I have to put all my focus on this? But I think as a writer, it’s been slightly different because we haven’t had to sit with the libretto in the same way as the composers have sat with their music.

Sophia: The induction week was like a massive acceleration of lots of new things, and digesting those quickly was really exciting. I’m really glad that we did have that first week to experience that sort of quickness and the intuitive way of working in a short space of time. I remember Nazli told us to hold onto that sense of play and experimentation, because that would be the thing that you could turn to in the trickier times — because the longer you stay with something, the more phases your relationship has with the story.

Sometimes you feel very connected to it, but then sometimes you’re having to reassess what it is. There is an ebb and flow, and I think there needs to be some way of anchoring you back in the piece. I have found that when I’ve been feeling a bit more overwhelmed by the piece — like it’s hard to get a grip on it — I’ve found returning to the way of working that we practised in the first week really useful as a way of reconnecting with the story.

Sorena: It’s definitely a long journey, sometimes it’s hard to stay with the same material for that long but it also lets you go much deeper. You start to see things in the work that were not visible at first, it kind of becomes part of your life honestly; you’re living with it. I think that kind of focus changes you. It sharpens your voice as a creator but it also really could be energy-consuming I would say and it becomes part of your life. It could become something really annoying, like an annoying creature living with you but at the same time you have to kind of protect it and raise it I think.

Adi: I’m very used to the long form of writing. -laughs- I’ve been working on my current book for two years — so this is actually short! My struggle was with induction week where everything was very, very quick and immediate. It was draining physically; but it wasn’t draining creatively, because it was actually really inspiring. 
I have never had to produce anything that quickly because I could always just take my time and develop. But here it was like, you have a half hour or an hour to make something, and that was a bit of a shock for me. 
But I also really liked it as a challenge, and I felt that it gave me a lot of energy. I also think it was a really great way to get to know each other a little bit and how our creative personalities mesh together. Because when you’re put on the spot, you kind of have to collaborate or it all falls apart!


Georgie: With your experiences in mind, how do you feel about the direction opera is taking, or should be taking, and where do you see your place within the medium?

Sophia: We have already been mentioning the joy of working with people who are alive — which I think says a lot about how it can feel entering the world of opera from both sides. There is this feeling of a very present legacy of what has come before. I know this exists in all art forms, but the way that it exists in opera… I don’t know if imposing is the right word, but it’s just you’re not maybe as aware of the wellspring of new work. This is the thing that makes an art form feel present and accessible; even though there is this long history, it also has this present life where new things are being created in response to the world as it currently is.

I think that is how doing the course has changed my perception of opera. I’ve had the idea that throughout its history it was backward looking — as in, there was this legacy of what had come before that was very present — but actually I now realise that is not necessarily the case. There are lots of times where it was sustained by new work, and new work was constantly happening; and it’s just that there’s maybe been a bit of a shift in culture around the reperforming of certain pieces — which obviously should still happen, because people connect with those works and feel deeply about them. I think it’s just exciting to be on the side of making work that is new, in a form which does have quite a lot of baggage — and realising that actually, inherently, it is just storytelling.

Mary: At Cambridge there was a lot of musicological emphasis on the history of opera. We studied a lot of Wagner and the Gesamtkunstwerk; and everything was all very intellectual, which gave me good foundational knowledge of where opera has been. In terms of where opera is going, I think it’s been really valuable to do this course because it feels incredibly different to be working on something in real-time — you can tackle issues or ideas that are relevant to yourself at the moment in contemporary society. So you get to write about things that are relevant to you, relevant to other people living today, relevant to your librettist… hopefully creating something that is then relevant to people of all generations to try and draw new audiences into seeing opera. 
It has been cool to see the singers bring it to life, because they all find their own connection to it in terms of what you have written about and how they see their own interpretation of it. They bring that to life in such a vivid way that feels very in-the-moment — compared to this wealth of history that can sometimes feel quite daunting.

Adi: For me, as a singer, I’ve encountered a lot of coaches and conductors who were very strict in the way they approached opera — sort of like a purist type of approach. There is definitely a space for that type of approach — because we do want to preserve the history of opera — but if we do only that, it becomes a museum of art rather than something that we live and breathe and still has a place today. So that’s why as a singer, I always gravitated towards the contemporary pieces; I wanted some more freedom within the music. That’s why I love this course so much: it’s trying to shape opera as a collaborative process, bringing it to life in a sense that can really draw people in, make it relevant today, and allow a place for creativity. 


Sorena: This is something I have been thinking about a lot. Opera isn’t really my main medium, but it’s been like a teacher, something I deeply respect. I’ve learned a lot through this course, but going forward, I feel more drawn to exploring a new form. One that’s rooted in Iranian classical music and Iranian classical performance practices, like Ta’zieh and others. I want to write for Iranian instruments and voices using our own vocal tradition rather than Western operatic singing. 

That said, I do think opera as a form needs to be re-examined; just like it went through major changes in the romantic era with people like Wagner or Carl Maria von Weber trying to rethink it in contrast to Rossini and others. I believe today it’s time again for a kind of renewal or at least serious reflections. Opera could still have a more direct connection to people. It’s a powerful form. So the real question is, are we just preserving it as a tradition or are we using it as a living, creative, effective tool? That’s what we need to keep asking. And for me, being part of this course was part of searching for that answer. Even if I ended up continuing in a different direction, I think I will carry that question with me.

Sam: On the course we’ve all experienced going to the Royal Opera House and seeing the canon rolled out on stage (Verdi, Puccini, Wagner etc). At the beginning of the year, we also went to the Cockpit Theatre to see Ábel Esbenshade and Aubrey Lavender’s Horse Person Opera, which was a totally different setting and experience but just as enthralling and engaging, if not more so. These two particular examples demonstrate the range and breadth of scale, subject and sonic world that the operatic medium is able to engage and grapple with, whether it be on the grand operatic stage of Covent Garden or the chamber setting [of] a smaller theatre. It shows why all kinds of composers through the ages have been seduced by the array of its possibilities, and that will only continue I think! It’s a ridiculous and absurd world at times — as Samuel Johnson put it, “an exotic and irrational entertainment” — but is also strangely beautiful and manages to tell truths (and lies!) on stage; holding up a mirror for us to reflect on our own time and situation.

Witnessing the first public showing of Turnage’s Festen was a very interesting moment for us all to witness and to debate, thinking about what kinds of work we put on stage in the 21st century. Personally, I’ve found the environment of the course to be extremely inspiring, as you’re composing a piece absolutely in tandem with the singers who will sing it, the players who will perform it, and the technicians who will put it on stage. This traditional way of writing opera in a small company/troupe — going back to the time of Mozart — is part of the course’s ethos; and I’ve found this to be stimulating in a very contemporary way, not an antiquated one.

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Guildhall’s 2025 Opera Makers runs between 27th June and 2nd July at Milton Court Studio Theatre, London, as part of Guildhall’s Making It Festival – learn more and get your tickets at:

• https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/whats-on/opera-makers-0

Jess McNulty’s opera MEDUSA, with composer Goi Ywei Charn, is premiering at Silk Street Music Hall, London, on 11 July – learn more and get tickets at:

• https://www.tickettailor.com/events/vertebratheatre/1726020

Learn more about the 2025 Opera Makers and their practices at:

• https://adidenner.com/
• https://www.instagram.com/jessnaomi_/
• https://linktr.ee/sophiatrewick
• https://maryoffer.com/
• https://sammeredithmusic.com/
• https://soundcloud.com/sorenaasabah/

This article was last updated on 19th June 2025.