I felt hugely honoured when I was asked to compose a new setting of Christ’s “Seven Last Words” for Easter this year. I also felt the weight of 500 years of tradition on my shoulders. 

Dear Marie Stopes is my new opera inspired by a controversial sex manual from 1918 and an extraordinary archive of private letters that has startling relevance for today's world.

With such rich and complex source material, it felt important that the music, in some way, supported and reflected its central themes. I hope that using different voice types to raise questions about gender stereotypes goes some way towards achieving this.