THE INTO OPERA APPROACH TO STORYTELLING

A note from GENEVIEVE RAGHU, FOUNDER OF INTO OPERA

Directing, for me, is an act of translation - across time, emotion, and space. It begins with deep respect: for the context in which a work was first conceived and the intentions of the original composer and librettist - the creative forces that shaped it, and the audiences it was initially crafted for. Who told this story, when, where, and why? These questions matter. They’re the foundation stones of fidelity - the past whispering through the present.

​

But theatre is live, and so its life must be felt now. I approach each work as a living thing, asking: how can we ensure its emotional truth still lands, still stirs, still surprises? What needs to be bridged or reinterpreted so that a story resonates with the same urgency today as when it was first told? This is where performability becomes vital: staging choices that serve both the story and its contemporary pulse.

​

I believe an audience isn’t just a receiver, they are a participant in the creative event. From the moment they enter the auditorium, they begin experiencing the world we’re building. Every detail: aural, visual, spatial, is curated to immerse and activate their imagination. This is not passive observation. It’s shared breath, shared risk, shared wonder.

​

Opera, in its richest form, is collaboration: between music and movement, text and trajectory, performers and place, story and spectator. My role as director is to make that dialogue possible - and irresistible.

​

And this collaboration is incomplete without audiences from every walk of life. To bring opera to new and wider audiences is to affirm that this artform is fact one that speaks to shared human experience in all its complexity. Opera contains the full range of emotions, the big questions of identity and belonging, the everyday and the mythic. It deserves to be encountered in school halls, parks,  community spaces, theatres and concert halls - wherever people gather with curiosity and openness. The more diverse the audience, the more vital the artform becomes. Relevance isn’t a compromise, it’s a commitment to connection.