Be strong and follow your own convictions. You can't assume there is a lot of time to do what you like. This is what David Bowie is afraid of: that he will die before he gets a chance to make a real strong contribution. ↗
I would find myself, not necessarily always assigning these little bits of music for here or there, but all of a sudden something would fall into place and it would be exactly that. ↗
Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while. ↗
There's got to be something that you can do that will not just be a nice honor to the play, or the book, or the movie you're dealing with, but some aspect that maybe can explore something that the play couldn't do. ↗