Daniel Handler might have published the final instalment in the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events last October, but his authorial alter ego, Lemony Snicket, lives on in the recent work The Composer Is Dead. A collaboration with San Francisco–based composer Nathaniel Stookey, this classical music piece—a murder mystery—aims to instruct young audiences in the workings of an orchestra. Thirty-six-year-old Handler has long been a music buff, having written both a comic novel structured as a mock opera (Watch Your Mouth) and an indie film based on Verdi’s Rigoletto(Rick). He frequently teams up with acerbic pop musician Stephin Merritt; the pair recently released a CD to accompany the Unfortunate Events books. On tour for the album, Handler played accordion and sang, in his words, “only slightly better than a drunk person at karaoke.”

What is The Composer Is Dead, exactly?

It’s a piece for narrator and orchestra in the tradition of Peter and the Wolf. I was about to say in the tradition of “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Which it is not—as noble a tradition as that is.

The Peter and the Wolf tradition meaning what?

Meaning a piece for narrator and orchestra that introduces the section of the orchestra to people who might be unfamiliar with them.

And you are narrating it as Lemony Snicket?

Well, Lemony Snicket never quite makes it, so I show up in his place. I’m doing my usual pinch-hitting. That might be the first time in history that I’ve ever used a sports metaphor.

You’re not a sports fan?

I’m not opposed to them or anything. But I’m unable to follow them.

How did the project originate?

It originated when I was giving another interview to a reporter in San Francisco. I said that one of the wonderful things about living there was that I ran into people from my childhood all the time. And, at that precise moment, Nathaniel Stookey—who I hadn’t seen since I graduated from high school—came around the corner, and it was so phony looking that the reporter assumed I had just spotted him out of the corner of my eye and set up a reunion. But that is not what happened.

When did this occur?

It happened about three years ago. Yes, because my wife was pregnant, and now I have a three-year-old. So, it turned out that we liked each other’s work and continued to get along from our high school days, and he suggested we collaborate in some way. I was enthusiastic about that, but couldn’t really figure out how it could be done, seeing as he’s a classical music composer and I’m a fiction writer. There’s not a lot of overlap there. But then, that Christmas, I was the narrator for Peter and the Wolf, and it occurred to me that I liked the idea of Peter and the Wolf better than Peter and the Wolf, and that everyone is actually tired of Peter and the Wolf. It’s not actually a very good way to introduce people to the orchestra, because people never remember a thing about the orchestra as a result of Peter and the Wolf. I said to him, 10 minutes after doing the narration, we should do a new Peter and the Wolf. And it went from there.

It’s not an opera, but you yourself are a big opera buff?

I am.

Were you a fan as a young man?

I was a boy soprano. I was in a number of operas before puberty spoiled my career.

But you still sing?

Not in any kind of professional setting.

Would you ever write a full-length opera? Is that something that interests you?

Mr. Stookey and I have fantasies about writing one. And Mr. Merritt and I are trying to write a musical film together. So I anticipate there’ll be more collaboration with more talented people. That’s my goal, when I’m collaborating, to find someone way more talented than me.

The musical you’re working on with Stephin Merritt—that’s been in the works for a while, right?

Yeah, it has. We had the idea for it when he had just come up with the idea for 69 Love Songs, and I had just come up with the idea for Lemony Snicket. We more or less said, “We’ll try to work on it, but we better get these things off our plates first.” Now we’re just beginning to get them off our plates.

Do you miss the Lemony Snicket books? I guess it’s not really that far in the distant past?

Yeah, I just returned from tour like a week and a half ago.

You haven’t had time to miss them.

I’m still just finding my desk. But I expect I will miss them. I mean, there will be more Lemony Snicket books, there just won’t be more in A Series of Unfortunate Events.