Quotes About Opera

It is essential to do everything possible to attract young people to opera so they can see that it is not some antiquated art form but a repository of the most glorious music and drama that man has created.

I have no desire to become a crossover artiste, singing with microphones. I believe in opera; that it is something that young people would love if they had a chance to hear it.

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.

I seek out hard things. I tried to imitate other singers. It was a self-discovery for me to move from imitating others to me growing to sing in my own voice. The opera was difficult and it felt like a personal conquest.

People may have thought that we changed a lot. I don't think we came in with that intention. Certain things I can't stomach. But I tried to be as collegial as possible. When you sign that contract, you're tied to that opera house to try your best. But every different team will play with a different intensity.

I love the way Monteverdi's opera embodies the triumph of evil love in such a luscious way. The closing love duet is just pure amoral, liquid passion. The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment sound great in the Albert Hall, and the Glyndebourne cast is fabulous.

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

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.

What is crucial here, however, is this anthropological point: that contemporary science is as cultural as shamanism, opera, Catholicism, or the Boy Scouts. It does not stand outside of culture in a space of perfect objectivity.

that opera, in fact, is the highest redemption of longing. That it's her own anguish, salvaged by music.

I've always said, I prefer the opera to the soap - those extreme characters and circumstances.

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

Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.

great sport, during their few idle hours, of sitting in the house's green-shuttered windows and watching the doings at headquarters through opera glasses, then offering commentary to passing police officials.

Woe is all I possess. Wagner, Die Walküre

like the only hummable tune in a difficult opera.

Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.

Much as I usually like opera,' Irene said through gritted teeth, 'at the moment, I'd only take interest if a masked maniac was about to drop a chandelier on the heads of the audience. Which I hope is not going to happen.

Much later in life, though, Gracie made a major contribution to the opera world. She stayed out of it.

The place was still there, present in the sunshine, instead of being hidden far away in darkness in the confines of some tragic opera.

It occurred to me as scandalous that Palmer and Antonia, after the scene in which I had taken part in the drawing-room, should have gone out to the opera. Antonia ought to have been waiting for me to come back. I resented this indifference to the tempo of my own drama.

The Calandra Institute, the Metropolitan Opera Archives, the library at Lincoln Center, and the Fashion Institute of Technology were helpful and key to piecing together what life must have been like at the turn of the last century.

Anyone who wants to promote a car or a football tournament turns to opera. There's a much greater public connection than the image of plush corporate boxes would suggest.

I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.