She's a Scottish lesbian writer who has been an outspoken advocate of women writers and experimental fiction--advocating for building on Virginia Woolf's legacy in that regard. That story (in the collection _The First Person and Other Stories_, which has done pretty well for a short story collection here in the US) combines together the operas Fidelio and Porgy and Bess with the story of a couple of indeterminate gender. I can't really describe it, but something in your description of an opera mashing up different times and cultures reminded me of it.