The fact is that great musical pieces take and hold the stage because they provide great emotional experiences.

Tanglewood [summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra] was a place where gods strode the earth.

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.

Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.

Music - opera particularly - is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate.

The secret of living is to find people who will pay you money to do what YOU would pay to do if you had the money.

Raving mad is quite easy. You just chew up the scenery or something. It's quiet mad that's hard.