Opera Quotes

Opera is given so little attention in the national press.

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.

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.

I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read.

For me, you say the words 'concept record,' and the first thing I think of is theater or the opera or something.

Opera tells stories through the pure emotion of music. An exhibition has to tell a story purely visually. I've tried to incorporate both of those things - pure emotion and being more visual - into my writing.

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself.

I don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy.

I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.

My worry is that opera will become an historic art form as opposed to a living, breathing thing.

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.

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.

Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

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.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

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.

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.

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.

I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.

So, I lived at the Beijing Opera, I ate there, I learned a craft. And the money we made went into the company.

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.

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.

The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.

I really wanted to be an opera soprano.

But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.

Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.

Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.

My parents were opera singers and voice teachers, so growing up, I admired musicians and dancers.

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.

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.