What exactly is a community opera? This is a question I put to the composer Matthew King who has just written a version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin to open the Stour Music festival in Kent (16-28 June). The venue is Boughton Aluph church on the ancient Pilgrim’s Way to Canterbury. “Community” implies children, or at least local people, doesn’t it? “I don’t know what it implies,” says King in a cafe next to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. where he is professor of composition. “Often it implies it’s not very good.” We agree that it at least suggests part-­amateur, although that is no different from the way in which the music world has always operated. A choral society is an amateur body which performs with pro