“There was a time in the late 1960s when the avant-garde composer Robert Ashley thought that the world was ready for televised opera.” In 1984, with the broadcast of his Perfect Lives, “Ashley was possibly even poised to give birth to a new popular genre — and then he didn’t. … It’s 25 years since [Perfect Lives‘] first TV success, yet Ashley is farther than ever from realising his dream of opera for television. But, even at 79, he’s patient.”