Where the Wild Things Are, Op. 20, is a fantasy opera in one act, nine scenes, by Oliver Knussen to a libretto by Maurice Sendak, based on Sendak's own 1963 children's book of the same title. Knussen composed the music from 1979 to 1983, on commission from the Opèra National, Brussels.
In form and subject matter the work relates to Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges, as well as Stravinsky's The Nightingale. Knussen also included a number of musical quotations, including Debussy's La boîte à joujoux and the bell motif from the coronation scene of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.[1] Robin Holloway has noted affinities of the score with aspects of Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy and Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice.[2]