Quotes About Opera

ON A JANUARY EVENING of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

Everyone in my family is an artist. Both my parents are painters and my mom's an opera singer. I was never shown any other way to process life.

As so many deaf people, he passionately loved opera

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.

My grandmother's life had been one long opera. There had been drama, heroes, villains, improbable twists, all that. But most of all there had been love, great big waves of it, crashing ceaselessly against the rocks of life, bearing us all back to grace.

Why was there never an opera that ended with a soprano who was free?

And then she leaned back her head with the faintest smile and, tapping her chin, asked, Are you in love with him, this mystery composer? How can I be? I asked in return. I don't even know him. Almost every opera is about this, she said, her smile growing. Love before first sight.

I went to watch Pavarotti once. He doesn't like it when you join in.

Doom is a classic supervillain, akin to the Phantom of the Opera. It's not about revenge so much as, like, 'I'm back - now watch this!' It all boils down to the music. The mask is a slight theme for people to enjoy, and it adds mystery.

I saw a lot of operas from backstage and watched a lot of rehearsals - my parents were singers.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

I loved doing commercials when I did commercials. I made a living. I worked in front of a camera. I could do plays for free.

Puccini is my favorite composer.

I love singing opera, but the world surrounding it is not me. I want to be barefoot. I want to be in control of my own career. I want to put on a show. In the opera world, you wait for people to call you until you get to a certain level. In the folk world, it's a lot easier to have control from the beginning.

One of the most difficult things in opera is for people to suspend disbelief.

I know the world of opera so intimately: historical sweep, sharply defined characters, not too rational an explanation of what's going on. It's a feast.

I'd want to play the Sydney Opera House.

In Montreal, when I grew up, I'd go to the Notre-Dame Basilica, a gorgeous cathedral in town. I'd listen to huge symphony orchestras, Pavarotti singing operas; that was absolutely marvelous. I like that aspect of the cathedral, the spectacle.

Standing in the back of the dark opera house and gazing at the huge stage before them, gay with gold-scrolled scenery and sumptuously costumed singers, the air vivid with bright music, was one of the most enthralling experiences of Blanche's life. For a time, she forgot her doubts about reality in the sheer delight of illusion. But, as Rose reminded her during the intermission, perhaps it wasn't illusion. Perhaps it was a glimpse of what reality was really like.

Learning operatic roles is ongoing, and I find that I can learn on the train or subway, during a manicure, getting my hair done, and even while driving if I only look at the score at red lights.

I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

Arguments about the origins of bluegrass are particularly intense because—as "traditional" as bluegrass is in comparison to the rest of American popular music—it has a starting point within living memory (unlike opera or symphonic music), and its origins can arguably be credited to one man

Musicians ought to reclaim some of the power in the houses of production. The opera houses are run either by managers or by stage directors, never by musicians.

At the opera in Milan with my daughter and me, Needleman leaned out of his box and fell into the orchestra pit. Too proud to admit it was a mistake, he attended the opera every night for a month and repeated it each time.