Make a note in your diaries: at the end of June 2024, my new chamber opera will receive three performances at the RCM’s Britten Theatre, under the direction of Bill Bankes-Jones (Tête à Tête). I’m excited to be collaborating on this project with writer Samir Chadha, who will be penning the libretto.

The short opera will follow a day in the absurd life of Philippe Noel Dulum, Paris’s most regular breather. All day, every day, his remarkably consistent respiration regulates the city’s pneumatic clock network. One morning, his wife leaves him – she’s fed up with his dull and excruciatingly predictable lifestyle. Philippe is panicked, the stress of his situation throws his breathing completely off-kilter, wreaking havoc not just on the uniformity of the clocks, but with the passage of time itself. This mayhem has hilariously catastrophic consequences for everyday life across the city.