Where the Wild Things Are (opera) dream is over, and Max starts to eat the food his Mama had left for him during his dream time. Where the Wild Things Are (opera) Where the Wild Things Are, Op. 20, is a 'fantasy' opera in one act by Oliver Knussen to a libretto by Maurice Sendak, based on Sendak's own 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
Where the Wild Things Are be that of a child who, after a tantrum, is punished in his room and decides to escape to the place that gives the book its title, the "land of wild horses". Shortly before starting the illustrations, Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous "Wild Things", a term inspired by the Yiddish expression "vilde chaya" ("wild animals"), used to indicate boisterous children. He replaced the horses with caricatures of his aunts and uncles, caricatures that he had originally drawn in his youth