The process was thorough and exciting, as he plumbed the depths of the Third Reich and Zarah herself. There were also some fundamental musical choices he had to make at an early stage: “I thought long and hard about the link between popular music and contemporary classical music,” he tells us. “For dramatic reasons, I soon decided not to cite music at all so as to avoid the feeling of a potpourri with a plot thrown in.”

Indeed, there can be no arguing that Anders Nilsson has composed his own 30s and 40s hits for his Zarah. On the whole, the process involved delving deeply into highly symbolic musical language.

“There’s a Jewishness in a kind of plaintive melos. There are also elements of Wagner in the music, and I’ve written Nazi marches and battle songs – as one might sing while throwing books on a bonfire.”

The dramatis personae include some important people in Zarah Leander’s world. Joseph Goebbels has a major role, just as large as the eponymous heroine’s. At her side is her Jewish dresser Judith – based on the real-life Else Jahnke, who had an affair with Goebbels and thus evaded death. The plot also contains a love triangle: Zarah is in love with film actor Florian, who’s in love with Judith and whose heart Zarah tries – in vain – to win.

The opera opens with the singer’s arrival in Germany, after having left her childhood home in central Sweden as Sara Hedberg, breaking up from a failed marriage that had given her two children (she subsequently remarried in 1931), and then single-mindedly pursued her career in entertainment with the likes of such luminaries as Ernst Rolf, Gösta Ekman senior, and Karl Gerhard. The prologue is a kind of dream sequence in fast-forward: Berlin in the early 1930s, terrified people fleeing in panic. Landing in their midst is a Swedish star, soon to be a German star, a Nazi star.

“Zarah was a narcissist. She did everything she could to get to sing and perform. She refused to see what was going on around her. And this is the focal point of the opera: this desire to be a star at any price.”
However, the Goebbels propaganda machine around Zarah hardens.
“In the end she can no longer turn a blind eye. She manages to save Judith’s life, but Florian perishes. I think that by the end of the opera, people will see Zarah as more than just a Nazi proselytiser.”

Anders Nilsson’s own impression of Zarah Leander changed significantly as he worked.
“But she had a choice. On a couple of occasions she got an invitation from Hollywood, but she stayed in Nazi Germany. In America, she would have just been one of the crowd. In Germany, she was, after all, number one.”

“Poor Zarah!” exclaims Anders Nilsson, “She was a great artist, but in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He goes on to talk about her wonderful charisma – and the chilly reception audiences gave her after the war.

“I think that’s one of the reasons why she fell more and more into a kind of vamp role: it reflected her spiritual dilemma. She was made a scapegoat for Sweden’s good relations with Germany during the war. She came to symbolise our guilty conscience, even though she was far from being the only Swede to believe in the Third Reich…. But I do feel as if I’ve connected somehow with Zarah the person.”.