Quotes from Richard Bonynge

If I can't do an opera as well as most people, I won't do it at all. I don't want to touch Wagner because I think a lot of people do it a hell of a lot better than I could. I do the operas I think I can do, know something about.

I am busy all day long. Never bored - I don't know what the word means.

I'm very fortunate. I've led a charmed life, I think.

The most important thing for any performer is to know your own weaknesses. It's much more important to know what you can't do than what you can do.

It takes a big voice a long time to develop properly; the bigger it is, the harder it is to develop the technique.

The idea is not to have one great singer surrounded by a bunch of nit wits. When the others are good, too, that's when you get something happening in opera.

I've had a wonderful life - I really didn't expect to have this career.

I go to bed at midnight and get up at 9. I never take a nap. I don't get tired.

Lots of young singers come to me and ask, 'May I sing to you?' I say, 'Yes, you can sing to me as long as you don't mind what I tell you, because I'm not going to flatter you. I'm going to tell you what I think.' Oh, yes, they're quite happy about that, until they hear it.

When I started, I'd never had a conducting lesson in my life; I could just do it.

You go to a musical; you are deafened by them, with everything blown up. I remember musicals when they didn't use microphones.

I like digging around. I'm a real magpie. I used to raid the old music shops in the early '50s in Paris and Brussels. You could pick up some incredible and often valuable music for almost nothing back then.

I am one of the luckiest people ever born.