Quotes About Opera

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera." So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto." Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.

The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever.

First, my frame of reference for the Britten opera shifted. I'd always thought of Britten's approach in Death in Venice as another exploration of the plight of the individual whose aspirations are at odds with those of the surrounding community: his last opera returning to the themes of Peter Grimes. As I read and listened and thought, however, Billy Budd came to seem a more appropriate foil for Death in Venice.

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?

I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.

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

In Europe, I'm recognized on the street sometimes. And that's cool, because I don't have to live there and deal with it every day. Unless you're Stephen King - a great writer, by the way, and anyone who says different knows nothing about the craft - you're more likely to be recognized in America if you play in a soap opera than if you're a novelist.

I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.

The structure of my life has changed a little. But we no longer have the time that we had, to be with family. Sometimes you can't even spend any time with friends because you are working so hard. You're either on tour or on promotion or suddenly we're taping the soap opera.

It's the economics, that's why opera is not dying but gets more and more difficult to put on.

There was something in the bel canto, not just opera, but a certain style of Italian singing that I responded to deeply.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

I want to get out of the major opera houses.

I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts.

I never socialized with singers. It's very dangerous if you work with opera... I don't think that in 30 years a singer has entered my apartment.

If you think that there are actually covers that we haven't done on 'Glee' that I could then put on an album... We've done everything! Pretty soon we're just going to have to start doing opera and stuff on the show.

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - its beyond belief.

My grandmother was this unbelievably smart, phenomenally cool woman and [soap operas] were just always on in her house. I just realized that I live in a soap opera, and it's awesome.

Opera is an extremely disciplined art form, and every excess a singer indulges in has a direct effect on the voice.

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

So my methodological approach is to draw on many different features in highlighting different facets of the novella (and the opera and the film).

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

If time were the wicked sheriff in a horse opera, I'd pay for riding lessons and take his gun away.

I fell in love with the classical crossover genre when I was on AGT. I found out that I could use the microphone to establish a deeper intimacy with the audience. I did not portray an opera character; I was my true self. I would sing a four-to-five minute piece for the audience and then I could talk to them and say "Hi" to them! I would not need to act out scenes where my character was dying from tuberculosis or killing somebody else on stage, I could have a nice conversation with them.

I felt that I really couldn't be creative with opera. You're supposed to sound this way here. You're supposed to crescendo here. You're supposed to do that. I had no sense of identity while singing that kind of music.

For better or worse, I've always been curious musically. Whether it's opera or Judy Garland or pop, I've deliberately sought those things out. I've never wanted to do the same things over and over. Some think I've accomplished what I set out to do, and others consider me a dilettante.

You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

I think I will always feel a special relationship with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, because for me it was something very, very special. It was a modern opera, and to play the heroine in a film that became such a success at a young age, and learning from him when I was so young and impressionable - really it was one of my most important experiences.

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

When I go to an opera performance and sit there while people are cheering and shouting "bravo," I sometimes ask myself what exactly they're cheering about. And I even see myself as an artist who also knows how to enjoy other people's performances.

Vietnam, me love you long time. All day, all night, me love you long time. (...) Dropping acid on the Mekong Delta, smoking grass through a rifle barrel, flying on a helicopter with opera blasting out of loudspeakers, tracer-fire and paddy-field scenery, the smell of napalm in the morning. Long time.

Opera on television in Europe is very important. If you think about it in the broadest sense: a lot of the dramas made in India with music are practically operas. They're not sung but they have a very big appeal. I don't know why American television people are so stupid but at the moment, they just seem to have some sort of a block. They just do what they do and they do it for a certain number of years. Then it wears out and they try something else. It's just a matter of time I think.

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

Yeah, unfortunately [ films like Miss Julie are a dying breed]. And that is sad, because we need these. Like we need books, we need classical music, we need ballet, we need opera, to remind us really of who we are and why we are, and we need in movie houses - even to be in a movie - where you sit and see not only excitement and man-hero, woman-hero, you need quietly, just like that Hawking movie we talked about, to know how people overcome.

I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.

In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn't sing. It's an intellectual play.

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.

I studied opera, and when I left conservatory I told myself I would never sing in public again.

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.

It's like telling Mozart that there are too many notes in an opera. Which one do you want us to take out?

My dream is to put together a performance of the evolution of black music with Cirque du Soleil . I would also like to do street opera and children's books. But even as I work toward these things, I want to simplify my life.

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.

I want to make these films that I think other people would be scared to do. I don't think anyone can go off and make a rock opera. I think it's a very specific niche.

Now of course like, you know fancy go to the opera and see drama and they regard them as high culture. And these, are really people for the most part who get uptighter. The idea that people you know might take their clothes off and dance in the street.