 Turnage , who had previously composed one full @-@ length opera , Greek , worked on the musical version of Twice between 1994 and 1996 . It was commissioned by the John S. Cohen Foundation . He had learnt of Kay 's original work after he was shown a copy of the BBC video by poet and artistic director Maura Dooley . It was a difficult development with Turnage at one point abandoning the work in favour of other pieces . Composer and librettist had started out with the intention of developing a full @-@ length opera including both soprano and baritone narrators . ( The original television script had included poems for the judge as well as for the woman . ) However , the creators felt that their attempts at redeveloping and expanding the original work " water [ ed ] down its impact " and they eventually cut everything apart from the woman 's words . Both text and setting also underwent repeated changes in detail . Kay changed some of the wording to make it easier to sing . Similarly , Turnage revised the music after trying it out with Sally Burgess who was to give the first performance . He had become Composer in Association with English National Opera ( ENO ) in 1995 and was able to thoroughly workshop Twice and its companion piece with ENO 's Contemporary Opera Studio before arriving at their respective final versions . 
