INTERVIEW
BY CLAUDIA PRITCHARD @claudiapritch
JACOPO SPIREI’S belief in a formula for social change—that if there was more opera in the world, there would be less crime—has fueled his passion for an art form that he sees not as an elitist luxury but as a human necessity. Individuals thwarted in love and life, he observes, lash out at things they cannot understand, accept or change. Opera can hold up a mirror that allows people to see that in themselves. “Self-deception is a most powerful thing,” he says, sipping coffee in the suitably theatrical setting of London’s gothic St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, “and opera is full of self-deception.”