Opera Quotes
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One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group. (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like. (Quote by - Parker Posey)
So, I lived at the Beijing Opera, I ate there, I learned a craft. And the money we made went into the company. (Quote by - John Lone)
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. (Quote by - W H Auden)
I performed in Sydney some years ago for the Sydney Festival and I am just so pleased to be returning to the wonderful Sydney Opera House and also performing in Melbourne for the first time. (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian. (Quote by - H. L. Mencken)
Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera. (Quote by - Robertson Davies)
I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang. (Quote by - Ruben Blades)
So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment. (Quote by - Beverly Sills)
What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't. (Quote by - Cab Calloway)
I'd hate this to get out but I really like opera. (Quote by - Ford Frick)
The real exertion in the case of an opera singer lies not so much in her singing as in her acting of a role, for nearly every modern opera makes great dramatic and physical demands. (Quote by - Maria Jeritza)
It's very much like opera singers. They do the same thing. The first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, the thing they think about is their voice and how to take care of it. (Quote by - Johnny Mathis)
I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts. (Quote by - Franco Zeffirelli)
Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian. (Quote by - H. L. Mencken)
It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story. (Quote by - Carlisle Floyd)
Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti. (Quote by - Neville Marriner)
Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint. (Quote by - Tony Curtis)
Music- opera particularly - is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate. (Quote by - Sarah Caldwell)
Because, in opera, I have to sing for people that are very far from me, instead of, when I sing a song, I try to imagine to sing like in an ear of a child. (Quote by - Andrea Bocelli)
I think every singer should be able to jump in for a singer who has been sick, for instance, and learn an opera in two days. I know people who can do it. (Quote by - Bryn Terfel)
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera. (Quote by - Trevor Nunn)
Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. (Quote by - Robert Burns)
I cannot go to the Opera, because I have forsworn all expense which does not end in pleasing me. (Quote by - Charles Townshend)
Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance. (Quote by - Placido Domingo)
Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera. (Quote by - James Stephens)
One of the most wonderful memories in my life was when I sang at the Opera House in Sydney. I will never forget that. It is one of the most beautiful Houses I have ever sung in my life. (Quote by - Nana Mouskouri)
I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were. (Quote by - Cab Calloway)
I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth. (Quote by - Ray Liotta)
If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away. (Quote by - W. H. Auden)
Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera. (Quote by - Sarah Caldwell)
Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish. (Quote by - Peter Shaffer)
If I weren't reasonably placid, I don't think I could cope with this sort of life. To be a diva, you've got to be absolutely like a horse. (Quote by - Joan Sutherland)
Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while. (Quote by - William Bolcom)
At the moment I'm enjoying a new challenge at the Royal Opera House, but I'm also keen to pursue my interest in television and particularly in science. (Quote by - Deborah Bull)
When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging. (Quote by - Placido Domingo)
In how many lives does Love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a 'grand passion' than of a grand opera. (Quote by - Israel Zangwill)
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. (Quote by - Ed Gardner)
It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else. (Quote by - Carlisle Floyd)
Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera. (Quote by - Mason Cooley)
It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
Wednesday a junior came to me, and told me I was to be hazed as I left the Opera House Friday night. (Quote by - Richard H. Davis)
Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process. (Quote by - Kenneth Clark)
People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it. (Quote by - Noel Coward)
As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive. (Quote by - Sarah Caldwell)
If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role. (Quote by - Judy Garland)
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. (Quote by - Gioacchino Antonio Rossini)
Gone With The Wind' is one of the all-time greats. Read Margaret Mitchell's book and watch the film again; it's a soap opera in all its glory. It is superb and memorable. (Quote by - Timothy Dalton)
Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it's music, not words, that provides power. (Quote by - Marcel Marceau)
Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music. (Quote by - John Philip Sousa)
I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera. (Quote by - Robert Ashley)
I never was an opera fan -- about twenty-five musically supreme masterpieces in this curious medium apart. (Quote by - Hans Keller)
When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance. (Quote by - Victor Borge)
I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera. (Quote by - W B Yeats)
I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know in any other medium. And they don't get very much approbation for it. (Quote by - Joan Collins)
But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows. (Quote by - Placido Domingo)
The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one. (Quote by - Jean de la Bruyere)
This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it. (Quote by - John Mellencamp)
I had a soap opera, and my next job was working with Kyle McLachlan on The Invisible Man. (Quote by - Elisabeth Rohm)
The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money. (Quote by - Wim Wenders)
Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama. (Quote by - Marguerite Blessington)
Many years ago I was in another soap opera called The Newcomers which was on twice a week for three years. I really don't think I could do another stint like that again. (Quote by - Jeremy Bulloch)
I don't know why a computer game can't be an art form just as a puppet show or an opera is. I'm still interested in computer games as something I would like to work on someday. (Quote by - Fred Saberhagen)
A supreme social challenge. (Quote by - Cleveland Amory)
The cynical part of the answer is that I expect to see a good deal more space opera, set far enough in the future as to be disconnected from contemporary issues. (Quote by - John M. Ford)
I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970. (Quote by - Virgil Thomson)
Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic. (Quote by - Bobby Short)
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out. (Quote by - Gian Carlo Menotti)
We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi. (Quote by - Cecilia Bartoli)
They're getting me involved in intrigue again, and I think it follows a classic formula in a soap opera. (Quote by - Michael Zaslow)
I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself. (Quote by - Julie Taymor)
We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear . (Quote by - Freddie Mercury)
Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life. (Quote by - Joe Lando)
Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater. (Quote by - Graeme Murphy)
It is essential to do everything possible to attract young people to opera so they can see that it is not some antiquated art form but a repository of the most glorious music and drama that man has created. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
I was the first movie star to plunge into night-time soap opera. (Quote by - Dorothy Malone)
I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses. (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love. (Quote by - Dario Argento)
Bed is the poor man's opera. (Quote by - Italian proverb)
When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy. (Quote by - Leslie Easterbrook)
As a teenager I studied opera, believe it or not. But I just couldn't catch on to it. (Quote by - Karen Black)
The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. (Quote by - Dan Cook)
As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly. (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
Even the Beatles lived their lives as a soap opera. (Quote by - Chris Lowe)
I really wanted to be an opera soprano. (Quote by - Maureen O'Hara)
Opera is given so little attention in the national press. (Quote by - Carlisle Floyd)
I was more of a light opera singer, not really much of a lounge singer. (Quote by - Melinda Clarke)
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand. (Quote by - Edward Appleton)
A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on. (Quote by - William Devane)
I enjoy listening to opera at home, occasionally, but I would much rather see it than just listen to it. (Quote by - Sam Waterston)
But to me the actual sound of the words is all important; I feel always that the words complete the music and must never be swallowed up in it. (Quote by - Lotte Lehmann)
Later, I even appeared in a Rock Opera with Richard Gere. (Quote by - Barry Bostwick)
People think top singers are overpaid, but opera houses have a top fee, which is a good thing. Of course concerts are different- everyone wants to make as much money as possible. (Quote by - Bryn Terfel)
Opera? Just what the world needs: more fat women screaming. (Quote by - Peter Boyle)
I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on. (Quote by - John Eaton)
I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet. (Quote by - John Ruskin)
Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations. (Quote by - Carlisle Floyd)
I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock. (Quote by - Rick Moranis)
If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it. (Quote by - Sarah Caldwell)
I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music. (Quote by - Anthony Davis)
The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. (Quote by - Harrison Birtwistle)
The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge. (Quote by - Cleveland Amory)
Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose? (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself (Quote by - Nellie Melba)
One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time. (Quote by - Gioachino Rossini)
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral. (Quote by - H. L. Mencken)
To tell you the truth, I never listen to opera at home! (Quote by - Lesley Garrett)
A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator. (Quote by - Steven Berkoff)
But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world. (Quote by - John Eaton)
Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It's equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera. (Quote by - Lindsey Buckingham)
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time. (Quote by - Bobby McFerrin)
In opera, there is always too much singing. (Quote by - Claude Debussy)
Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive. (Quote by - Moliere)
I sang opera, I sang show tunes. I got into a rock band for a while. I've sung a lot of different things. (Quote by - Tom Wopat)
I don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy. (Quote by - Bernard Haitink)
If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window. (Quote by - Doug Coupland)
In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn't sing. It's an intellectual play. (Quote by - Jerome Lawrence)
You are beautiful and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord. (Quote by - Amy Lowell)
Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong. (Quote by - Terry Prachett)
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I do not understand. (Quote by - Sir Edward Appleton)
Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama. (Quote by - Bruce Beresford)
In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things. (Quote by - Luciano Pavarotti)
I only use my sick days for hang-overs and soap opera weddings. (Quote by - Kate O'Brien)
The opera always loses money. That's as it should be. Opera has no business making money. (Quote by - Rudolf Bing)
Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it. (Quote by - John Eaton)
Give me a laundry-list and I'll set it to music. (Quote by - Gioacchino Rossini)
I had four or five years in school training as a soprano. I fell into pop singing because of economics. I got out of high school and had to go work, and they weren't hiring opera singers. (Quote by - Jo Stafford)
