Quotes About Opera

My mother was devoted to helping people - with my father's money! - who had great voices but didn't have the financial means to study music. He and my mum gave away dozens of music scholarships, and my mum opened a school in town, introduced opera to children and created fantastic programmes.

I feel opera is an expression of artistic excellence. To do it is expensive, as there's a requirement for an orchestra, good voices, excellent sets, and the fact that productions generally have only short runs. But I believe it's something we ought to achieve as a nation.

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

All professionals who make special use of their breathing as part of their work, such as opera singers, wind instrument players, dancers, actors, and martial artists, know the value of breathing from the belly and of "grounding" or anchoring their awareness in this region.

Opera and church recitals are options, of course, but they require some initiative and arrangement: tickets and schedules and so forth. I am not good at that; it's rather like fixing a three-course meal for yourself - perhaps even lonelier.

I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera – except that it hurts.

The symphony had its origin not in instrumental forms like the concerto grosso, as one might have expected, but in the overture of early Italian opera. The overture, or sinfonia, as it was called, as perfected by Alessandro Scarlatti consisted of three parts: fast-slow-fast, thus presaging the three movements of the classical symphony.

People perceive opera and classical as elitist - I disagree. I've always tried to mix the two, make it more accessible.

In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn't perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.

I'm a lover of all sorts of music, which makes me a chameleon when it comes to performing anything, whether it's opera or whatever. As long as it's good and it feels good, I'm going to cling to it.

I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

Politically it's easy to salve one's conscience, no matter that salving it rarely makes the problem go away. You join the Labour Party, write articles attacking the privileged, give the money you spend on opera tickets to homeless charities, and vow never to go to anything that can be considered elitist again.

Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour.

Wagner is a composer who has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours.

I don't think I was ever particularly mean. I can certainly think of some idiotic exchanges I've had. I was accused of destroying pop music, like Wagner destroyed opera - a guy in Germany started ranting that at me.

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.

We've been listening to Wagner, which is so great.

I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

As any opera fan knows, lawyers and judges do not fare well in most operas. Just consider the productions of 'Andrea Chenier,' 'Aida, Norma,' 'Billy Budd,' 'Peter Grimes,' 'The Crucible,' 'Lost in the Stars,' 'The Marriage of Figaro,' 'The Makropulos Case' and Wagner's 'Ring' cycle. Around 1810, the theme of justice emerged in opera.

My stepfather was quite into opera, but he'd play it when he was in a bad mood, so you'd hear this boom through the floor, Wagner, and you'd feel nervous.

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy.

To play opera, to play Wagner, it's a great joy.

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.