Quotes About Opera

Well, basically there are two sorts of opera," said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. "There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh I am dyin', oh oh oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely.

Opera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.

I was going to be a singer. If I hadn't been in my profession, I was going to be an Opera singer. That's from a young kid. I had all these records from all those famous Opera singers. I wanted to be an Opera singer - that was my whole thing and physical fitness got in the way, thank God.

Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.

But Opera Man, I go, "Oh, crap! Why didn't I think of that?" Because I could sing fake opera pretty good.

The nice thing about doing a pop opera is that, because the convention is set from the beginning that this is an opera and everything is sung, there is never that feeling of "Why is this person bursting out into song?" because the whole thing is sung.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.

The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.

To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion - and above all, the passion.

Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.

For me, the most enjoyable type of singing is opera. It allows you to move, to wear a costume ... to do something with your body. When singing in concert you have to stand up in front of the audience, next to the conductor, which is less natural.

Philanthropy is no longer about writing a check for $10,000 to the opera.

Order in a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid.

It was an emergency!" Seth blurted. "Read my lips - emergency reading - not some demented idea of fun. If I was starving, I would eat asparagus. If somebody held a gun to my head, I would watch a soap opera. And to save Fablehaven, I would read a book, okay, are you happy?" You had best be careful, Seth," Grandma warned. "The love of reading can be contagious." I just lost my appetite," he declared.

Just send the emails and talk to people. Spend all your money on nail polish and opera tickets.

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.

I don't find much influence in opera. It was such a different part of me.

My dream is to be played everywhere, not only at the Opera.

I want to get out of the major opera houses.

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.

In preparing my thesis, I have had the pleasure of collecting testimonies from colleagues such as Placido Domingo but also from singing teachers and musicologists. The entire course of study has confirmed what I already thought, that the value and meaning of opera singing, at the beginning of the third millennium, remain intact.

If you look at Marriage of Figaro or Butterfly or Traviata, all of those elements are in there. I also have to have a very specific location in mind. The physical environment of where the opera takes place is very key - the "sound world."

I'm still wondering about the Phantom in the chair, you know at the end of Phantom [of the Opera], so I guess that's my sort of idiocy. I still haven't figured out how they do that.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: 'What are we going to do in five years' time?' A completely different attitude.

I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is something special about that sort of terrestrial television experience for a mass audience.

Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another.

Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

I really wanted to be an opera soprano.

It's very difficult to photograph an opera. And they messed up on it. It just wasn't there. And I don't blame the Gershwins for taking it away. Of course, if they had gotten the original company to have done it, it would have been very good

I want to sing using a throatsinging style, like for example kargyraa, but at the same time sing it like a normal way. Maybe I will try some opera. To sing a melody, and to sing not only Tuvan traditional melodies, but I would like to try Western classics, blues. I think Tuvan music and American blues are very close to each other.

Everyone has their own taste: some like theatre, some don't, some like opera, some don't, some like pantomimes, and some don't.

Life beats down and crushes our souls and theatre reminds us that we have one. At least the type of theatre that I'm interested in; that is, theatre that moves an audience. You have the opportunity to literally impact the lives of people if they work on material that has integrity. But today, most actors simply want to be famous. Well, being an actor was never supposed to be about fame and money. Being an actor is a religious calling because you've been given the ability, the gift to inspire humanity. Think about that on the way to your soap opera audition.

We would never get away from it. ... It's bad enough as it is, but with the wireless telephone one could be called up at the opera, in church, in our beds. Where could one be free from interruption?

I was singing when I was five years old. My sister and I both had the talent from mom and dad, and she was in opera and I was into pop and uh, rhythm and blues, anything, I was about a four octave singer.

I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music?... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

I always wanted to be a comedian. I loved comedy since I was a little kid, and while I was at university I started doing stand up shows. Once I realized that I was good at it I quit college and left although I had six months left. I went to England. I could have done the last six months but I realized that I was better at standup comedy than I was at singing opera.

It's the perfect environment for prayer. Chanting in Greek is like a beautiful opera, but way better.

Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose?

I was a kid, and I remember my mother singing. She was also a radio soap opera actress, but my mother sang.

Dare to be honest and fear no labor. ... Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

I was on the soap opera 'Days of our Lives.

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.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.

There's no rational reason why opera should exist. It's expensive, time consuming. Yet in some shape or other it has always existed.

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.

When I'm about to train a new opera, I first listen to how Jussi Björling did it. His voice was unique and it's his path that I want to follow. I would more than anything else wish that people compared me with Jussi Björling. It's like so I'm striving to sing.

My mom was an opera singer, and she gave up her career to raise a family. But she also taught my sisters how to sing.

Opera: I like it, except for all those howling sopranos and caterwauling tenors. (Why can't tenors sing like men?)