From 2008:
Of course it’s perfectly possible to hold the attention of an audience for much longer than an hour and a half—Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County plays for three and a half hours—but since so many modern operas have been both overlong and musically uninviting, it struck us that we might do well to surprise everyone by making our first opera as short and accessible as a classic Hollywood movie….
Read the whole thing here.