Want to know where the wild things are? Look no further than behind the curtain to the man who started it all. British cartoonist and author Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) is best known for illustrating the storybook, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), but did you know he also designed the set and costumes for Oliver Knussen’s 1983 operatic adaptation of his work, along with Higgelty Pigglety Pop!? He did! In 1978, the National Opera in Brussels commissioned British composer Oliver Knussen (1952-2018) to write an opera for the International Year of the Child. The project would premiere in Brussels in 1980 and again a few years later at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in London, 1984. Sendak and Knussen both remark on the difficulty of converting a picture book with a few words to an entire libretto. The book’s drawings are often larger than life, inviting the reader and Max into his fantasy- the music does the same, extending long interludes for the audience to indulge in the abstract land of the Wild Things. Much like the young boy in L'enfant et les sortilèges, Max must take a magical journey to learn the power of empathy and respect his mother. Unfortunately, we do not hold the opera’s entire score or a recording, but we do have the 17-minute orchestral suite, Songs and a sea-interlude, which comprises the majority of Max’s melodies into a character portrait. Interestingly, Max is voiced by a soprano, carrying the theatrical tradition of women playing a young boy like Cherubino in Moart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Barrie’s titular Peter Pan.