Time seems to move twice as fast for Edward Gardner as it does for anyone else. At 29 he was the music director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera. At 30 he was whipping up a storm at the Edinburgh Festival in the so-called "terrorist opera", The Death of Klinghoffer, while incredulously fending off the suggestion (from me) that he might be invited to take over at Scottish Opera. And by 31, just a few months after stating his ambition to head an opera house, he duly leap-frogged the Scots and was propelled into the top slot at English National Opera.

On the one hand that could be seen as mission accomplished; on the other, it’s the start of a whole new battle – to take charge of a company that has persistently struggled to get onan even administrative, artistic and financial keel. Perhaps this is why, in the two years since we last met, Gardner’s floppy hair is now cropped (and greyer) and the stubble is thicker – and why he tells our photographer: "I don’t do smiles." So much for the frequent comparisons with the very smiley David Cameron – a charge that Gardner finds more irksome than the more common one of inexperience.

Of course, some of the angst could be put down to spending his weeks rehearsing Britten’s morbid swansong, Death in Venice,which will mark his proper ENO debut. In fact, he’s buzzing from the thrill of it. "It’s as watery and as incredible a portrayal as anything in [Peter] Grimes," he enthuses, "and that amazing brass chorale which sounds to me exactly like the promise of a very hot day, with that golden brilliance – it’s extraordinary writing, and incredibly intoxicating."

This is Gardner on the music – as eloquent and dextrous as he has proved himself in the pit. He’s compulsive and engrossing on just how the construction of Death in Venice mirrored the symptoms of Britten’s own heart disease, as well as the ageing composer’s dwindling sense of professional self-worth.

Turn the conversation over to the perils and pitfalls of business at the Coliseum, and you don’t hit disaster: the 32-year-old is on-message, insistent and upbeat. He hasn’t – yet – got quite the same composure, or total plausibility.

"Of course there are two sides to the job," he says. "One of the them is managerial, and you need to have a certain persona for that. But generally speaking my goals are what I want to achieve musically – which is making, or continuing, ENO’s position as being completely artistically indispensable to London."

Yet ENO’s position is probably just as endangered now as it was when the latest management team – the artistic director John Berry and chief executive Loretta Tomasi – took over. Rumours have circulated that government cuts forced by the Olympics will kill off ENO’s subsidy; the box office has, Tomasi recently admitted, consistently underperformed. Now more redundancies have been promised, as well as what’s being billed as a strategic withdrawal from the Coliseum for five weeks every season, to rent out the building for a more reliable income.

One thing that Gardner is categorically sure of, however, is how much ENO belongs on St Martin’s Lane. "This building is essential to what we do, and anyone who’s heard a Shostakovich opera here, or a Strauss opera, knows it has a perfect acoustic – I’ve thought that since I heard Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk when I was 13."

So it’s no surprise to find that the big operas and the big composers are top of Gardner’s wishlist for the seasons ahead. "I’d love Verdi to become a real staple of this company again. Wagner, also, for sure – maybe not with me conducting, but in a few years." Including Phyllida Lloyd’s Ring Cycle production, yet to be performed complete? "For me conducting a RingCycle isn’t a priority, but it’s something we would consider."

So why not make a full-time commitment to the theatre? "I think we’ve found an artistic model that will give us the flexibility to have big blocks of the season and parts of the season where we can do more chamber-like pieces. Next year it’ll be the Matthew Passion, with Anthony Minghella directing, and we’re just looking for the right venue. We’re trying to regenerate elements of our audience."

But the bedrock of a music director’s remit lies in his orchestra – and this is where Gardner’s two personas, the ENO manager and the ENO conductor, may find themselves on a collision course. Just as he is promising Wagner and Verdi on the main stage, so Tomasi’s plan for action includes redundancies in the orchestra that he’ll need to pull those big works off. "You’re right to question it," he admits, frankly. "I need to make sure that, whatever happens, our standards aren’t compromised in the very large-scale pieces."

But Gardner isn’t allowing any concessions to those critics who have wondered just how committed that orchestra is. "For me the critical reception is a long way out of date. This orchestra want to be better, they want to be challenged, and they want good conductors to stand in front of them. They’re hungry for excellence." This is either good diplomacy or a covert admission that it’s Gardner’s recent predecessors in the Coliseum pit who have faltered rather than the band.

It also makes you wonder exactly to what extent Gardner intends to emulate his self-confessed professional mentor Mark Elder, who was famously christened "the Ayatollah" by the ENO players for his hard-nosed approach after he took over at ENO in 1979 – at the same age as Gardner is now. Gardner consults Elder regularly, he says (after we meet he is off to hear him conduct at Covent Garden and to confer with him after), but he also seems to take a different approach. "I try and work by persuading people, not by forcing them do things," he says.

What he definitely does share with his mentor is the intensity of his commitment – already proved by his rapid and focused rise to the top, from choral conducting at Eton, through to university conducting at Cambridge and the rapid exposure to the Hallé (where Elder appointed him his assistant) and Glyndebourne. "I really thought: ‘Well, if I’m going to [conduct], I’m going do it properly, and I set out from almost that moment to make it." The new job, however thorny, brings the same conviction: "I’ll give everything I have, for as long as they want me, and as long as it works."

THE BRAT PACK: YOUNG MAESTROS TO WATCH
Robin Ticciati
Following in Gardner’s foosteps, the (equally floppy-haired) boss of Glyndebourne on Tour is 24.
Gustavo Dudamel
The Venezuelan wunderkind (26) has recently been appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Phiharmonic.
Xian Zhang
One of a new generation of women conductors, the 33-year old made her ENO debut in February
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Now 32, the French-Canadian maestro will succeed Valery Gergiev next year at the Rotterdam Philharmonic.