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 was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.

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.

I wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid.

I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.

I'm the only person in my family who can't sing. My grandmother was an opera singer and all of her kids were in church five days a week - or between church and vocal lessons at Carnegie Hall. But my mom had her first studio experience recording on my album. She's used to having to fill the room, so she had to adjust to the microphone and not sing opera.

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

That's opera! I just love it. It just thrills me! And it's very different than theatre, and sometimes it can be frustrating because when you come in the first day of rehearsals obviously you're an opera fan, right?

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

Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.

If I were an opera singer, I"d have sung you an aria. If I were an artist, I would have painted your portrait. But cooking is what I'm best at.

Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.

I would love to sing opera.

In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.

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.

I belong to the givers. I want to give a little happiness even if I haven’t had much for myself. Music has enriched my life and, hopefully - through me, a little - the public’s. If anyone left an opera house feeling more happy and at peace, I achieved my purpose.

I guess I've always had such an identity crisis when it comes to other people's understanding of me. I don't feel it in myself but from an outsider's point of view, I can see they must be thinking, "Who the hell does this guy think he is?" But recently I've been thinking, okay, a white guy can't sing soul, but would a black person be made exempt from singing opera because it's not a tradition that belongs to them? It's the same kind of argument.

My works are a direct response to the typical space opera. I grew tired of always reading about how the people with power, with agency, get involved in huge sweeping arcs of stories. I wanted stories that dealt with real people, people I could relate to.

I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.

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

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

I listen to lots of music, especially Bach, opera (all periods), German lieder, chamber music, and rock, old and new. I can't listen to music while I write. It's too absorbing.

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.

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

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

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again.

The pop world is popular, and it's about what the people want and connecting to the masses, whereas opera, although it was once popular - and I still believe it can be - it has become very elitist and intellectual, but that certainly doesn't sell tickets. It's a struggle, but I've always embraced struggle and thrived off of it, so it's the way my life needs to go.

Im just a normal person. Its not like I come home and think about opera. My thoughts are about completely other things. Shoes! Dresses! Expensive ones: with a pretty silhouette, beautiful fabrics.

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

I keep to a minimum dialect, in-jokes about football (soccer) teams and soap opera characters, so as not to lose North American readers.

And my singing, I don't think I could sing Wagner or opera, but I could probably carry a tune. I was in a musical once, but it was never performed.

Music has always played a big part in my life and, believe it or not, in my soap opera career.

What's difficult to understand about German opera? It's always the same. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl gets devoured by horrible winged creature with claws.

All My Children' taught me a great work ethic; you work so hard on a soap opera!

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

Ever since 1980, sci-fi has generally been more Bladerunner than Star Wars. People talk about Star Wars being the most influential movie of all time and creating the blockbuster along with Jaws and that sort of thing, but really there's not been a space opera that anyone can go and see.

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.

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

You're just being cryptic again. It's like soap opera sex. Lots of boring dialogue and when they finally do go to bed, everything's dark and covered by blankets.

Love in France is a comedy; in England a tragedy; in Italy an opera seria; and in Germany a melodrama.

The problem with Maigret is he hasn't got a limp, and he hasn't got a lisp, and he hasn't got a French accent, or a particular love of opera... or all those other things that people tend to attach to many fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job, in a very interesting time.

I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera.

Roy Orbison was one of the genuinely nicest persons I've ever known. With one of the most beautiful voices in the history of recorded music he could easily have had an opera star's ego, but he was one of the humblest, kindest, sweetest human beings to grace this planet. This in spite of the enormous tragedies in his life. A brave, beautiful blessing of a man.

I became a set designer for opera.

New York. It's home to opera, Broadway, museums, the ballet and orchestra - everything that I love. The most real people in the world live there.