‘I had done a series of works like that back to back, and felt a bit exhausted, and wanted to do something from a new place.’ Instead, she began with the formal principles that united her and Damien. ‘We didn’t want the work to be narrative driven… we wanted it to be pure, and distilled, and experiential.’

Knowing that, they pulled apart the ideas they’d had for Jane, and realised it all came back to the voice. The concept of de-voicing brought them to the story of the Rusalka, the Slavic water sprite who must lose her voice to become mortal and find love. You might know this as Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

Adena then remembered a story she’d read about five girls who found themselves unable to speak following the 9/11 attacks, and fed that into the work. What transpired is in no way a literal telling of their story, but might echo their experience of horror, psychic anxiety, and a possible grasp for release.

It’s an idea common to much of Adena’s work, which has been preoccupied with the place of the voice and the difficulty of language. ‘Why somebody would be silent in the face of something is a mystery,’ she says, asking the question of these girls and their fellow silent witnesses through history. ‘It could be borne from a refusal or a choice, as much as a retreat, or an escape, or a sense of paralysis. Or a symptom of something that can’t be named.’

When I complain that, as a librettist, Adena’s textless opera has put me out of a job, she assures me that it’s not out of disdain for language. ‘I enjoy literature more than theatre,’ she confides. The problem, for her, is that ‘in traditional theatre our brain goes into a particular place when we hear words being spoken,’ while she wants to ‘communicate in forms that bypass the rational.’

Skipping the brain to hit you straight in the body, her work operates much like these girls and women, who are so often rendered voiceless, or when they do speak, are not listened to or believed. ‘Because the verbal becomes difficult, politically or psychologically, it’s like their body is communicating in some other way.’

Those bodies speak in ways that can’t always be controlled, which Adena knows well, having worked with young female performers multiple times. Her collaboration with teenage girls in The Bacchae was polarising and telling, with some audience members and critics focusing on the reality of these bodies far more than the ideas they were communicating. It’s an experience Adena has considered with rigorous clarity. ‘The politics of performance immediately sets up a dynamic where there’s a paying audience and figures on stage who are both the subjects and the objects. While they control many elements of the performance, they can’t control what the audience is seeing or thinking in their minds. That dynamic is inbuilt into many young women’s experiences of walking down the street, where you can perform a certain identity but you can’t control the gaze of others.’