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The newly commissioned work that followed was Kate Soper’s “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus,” a sensationally witty and profound monodrama about the meaning of music for amplified soprano and large orchestra.

The composer who was reluctant to write for theater would go on to create the richly nuanced monodrama “Émilie,” premiered by the soprano Karita Mattila in 2010; the Noh-inspired “Only the Sound Remains,” staged in 2016; and “Innocence,” first unveiled at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2021, a work powerfully wise in its ideas and execution, a smoothly cohesive collage of styles that now seems like something of a career capstone, if not her masterpiece.

Or so “Being Mr. Wickham,” a tart monodrama written by Adrian Lukis and Catherine Curzon, would have us believe.

“Eight Songs for a Mad King” is a 30-minute music-theater monodrama, written by Davies in 1969 in collaboration with the actor Roy Hart.

The message had seeped so deeply into her consciousness that when she was offered “Prima Facie” — a monodrama performed to huzzahs in London last year, and now to hearty approval on Broadway — she was surprised that she hadn’t been required to read for the part.