Once in a while, when everything is just right, there is a moment of magic. People can live on moments of magic.

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

Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.

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

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

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.

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