Working on operas requires plenty of teamwork, which provides an exception to a composer’s usually solitary writing. First the librettist and the director need to work together, and later on the entire production crew joins in. The opera Riddaren och draken (The Knight and the Dragon, 2000), which I was commissioned to compose for the 700-year jubilee of the Turku Cathedral, I was able to still partly work on as part of my university position. Käärmeen hetki (The Hour of the Serpent, 2005), which I composed for the Finnish National Opera, was finished to a great extent during leaves of absence. After that I decided to plunge into life as a freelance composer. My third opera, Eerik XIV (2010), became the main event of Turku’s year as the European Capital of Culture in 2011, a vast multimedia spectacle filling the new Logomo Hall.

I have produced plenty of vocal music through my profound interest in language and literature. Opera is, however, much more than just combining words and melodies; success depends on the stage, that is, how the composer is able to create real living characters, relationships between them and dramatic time structures and tensions. There are so many variables involved that it is impossible to make sure in advance that everything will work. That is why success is more like a miracle than something taken for granted.

• “Eerik XIV is a love story,” says composer Mikko Heiniö in an interview with Teostory magazine about his new opera Eerik XIV: