"The elephant in the room for opera singers, and classical musicians, is that we are competing against ghosts," she says.
Earlier in Stedwick's All-Purpose Room, the opera company's PR officers, Samson Asmamaw and Akosua Dapaah, described how their theme and plotline evolved.
"And this was a room crowded with opera singers," Mr. Telsey said.
Still, Mr. Pelly's direction allows ample room for the opera's sentiment and humor to shine through.
Planning, which involves casting, is the machine room of any opera - though boffins there have no public profile.
It has to work for the people in the room at the opera house and for the people at home as an entertainment programme".
He skated to his first gig, an apartment building at Broadway and West 171st Street in Upper Manhattan, to play for "a room full of opera singers and theater people," he said.
Strange ebony-black effigies of the king, gilded couches, exquisitely painted caskets, flowers, shrines, chests, chairs and chariots glinting with gold gave the appearance of "the property room of an opera of a vanished civilisation".
The historic city, with its Gothic spires, grand guildhalls and old wharfs, offered students the chance to select personal environments for their runway shows that could vary from the academy's underground sculpture room to the opera house, or even a flower shop — more opportunity for self expression than was given to students in the academy's early days.
