In this post, you will find great Opera Quotes from famous people, such as Kresley Cole, Robert Lepage, Beth Hart, Forest Whitaker, Roger Allam. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction – not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist‘s heart. The doubts, the uncertainty – the jealousy! – can be breathtaking.
Opera is a very stimulating place to work, and I believe it offers the most intense theatrical experience possible.
Opera requires an enormous commitment. You must devote your whole life to producing that extraordinary sound.
‘Macbeth‘ is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie – such as some of the special effects and bits of film – to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
The favorite thing I like to do is nothing. I’m such an expert at doing nothing. I have a boat. I make training films for the Coast Guard. I listen to a great deal of opera.
I’ve had an extraordinary life as a dancer. You tour the world, you see all the great capitals of the world, the beautiful old opera houses all over Europe – you go everywhere. As a teenager, I would always say, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to little me,’ because it was always a dream to dance.
The Opera House guidelines have from time to time been amended, whether it’s for other sporting events or other causes. The guidelines have always been stretched in the part and the commercialisation of the Opera House has always been there.
My main object is to write, to keep learning. I always try to perfect my composition. But I do like writing film and opera music. I believe that it fulfills the needs of particular situations.
You would be amazed at the pompadour that I was rocking in the first job I had on the soap opera called ‘Loving,’ my first contract job.
Texting isn’t writing. It’s not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It’s a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.
We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it’s opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There’s so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
I had this exceptional classical music voice. If I’d followed a true path for my talent, I would have ended up being an opera singer.
‘Amores Perros’ is rock, ’21 Grams’ is jazz, ‘Babel‘ is an opera, and ‘Biutiful’ is a requiem.
In opera, there is always too much singing.
When I was very little, I was sort of consumed by a love for opera. Weirdly enough, I went from being really enthusiastic about construction vehicles at the age of seven to being really passionate about ‘La Traviata’ by the time I was eight.
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’ll write three operas – one for Verdi, one for Puccini, and one for Bellini.
The opera in Los Angeles is excellent.
I was emotionally and physically punched in the stomach. This is not a place where you go and deliver the lines and then you come back. It’s kind of a life-changing experience. But it can’t get better than this for any actor – this is like an opera.
I love rock and opera, and I love musical theater, and I don’t want to lose any of that.
Soap operas are such a great way to break-in to the industry. The diminishing landscape of daytime TV means it’s going to be harder for young talent to get discovered.
I auditioned for soap operas and commercials; I remember auditioning for Lays potato chips. It was a sort of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty‘ sketch, where Captain Bligh was torturing the crew by saying, ‘You can only have one Lays potato chip,’ and they all rise up.
Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.
Music – opera particularly – is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate.
You can’t do opera when already from the 10th row you can only see little dolls on the stage. In such an enormous space you can’t put much faith in the personal presence of the individual singer, which is reflected in facial expressions, among other things.
On a soap opera, you’ll do an episode and a half a day, and in prime time television, you’re hustling to get an episode done in eight days. That’s a little bit frustrating sometimes. But there’s also something exhilarating about it. It’s kind of like live theater in a way, where you get one crack at it.
I love to conduct opera.
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.
I’d go over to my grandmother‘s house, and she’d be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play.
I’m by no means an opera buff.
The Royal Opera House? I once had the immense privilege of appearing there and was awed by the air of refinement of those seemingly ethereal beings who floated about in the highest echelons of musical accomplishment, effortlessly producing virtuoso performances in several different languages.
If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that’s what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn’t know it.
Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.
Nothing will ever be as big as ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ for me.
I got last-minute rush seats to Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Boheme,’ and my favorite singer, Ekaterina Solovyeva, was playing Mimi that day. My face got burned off when she sang the aria ‘Donde Lieta Usci.’ The woman was technically sobbing and singing opera at the same time. I don’t know how you do that.
I get people saying, ‘Opera is too large a canvas for me. I don’t love it. I love movies that feel almost like documentaries,’ in terms of artistic vocabularies of storytelling. I totally get that discussion; that makes sense to me.
And whether or not you’re interested in opera or classical music or folk music or the theatre, I think that for a nation‘s health and well-being it’s very important that the arts scene is supported.
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.
Growing up, my dad took me to the opera.
I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.
People have this idea that opera singers are overweight and sit at home eating bonbons. But I consider myself an athlete.
The activity of a singer that sings opera is similar to that of an athlete.
Every job you have, there are days that are more difficult than others. I worked on a daytime soap opera, where the volume at which you’re producing this medium is incredible.
When I was little, I had this old video camera, and I set it up, and I would pretend that I was on comedy shows and soap operas and things like that.
One of the problems with musicals and opera is you can’t ever hear all the words.
Everybody is always in the middle of their own opera.
I’m straight and always have been. When our family gets together, we joke about it or throw our hands up in desperation because there is very little we can do. If we make a big fuss about correcting these rumors, it just creates more attention and turns the whole thing into a soap opera.
A great opera house isn’t run by a director, but by a great administrator.
I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they’re a game, that’s where they should end. Things shouldn’t start as games and be taken to movies.
I’d want to play the Sydney Opera House.
I did grow up in France, and even though I didn’t go to the school or dance with the Paris Opera Ballet, I absorbed similar ideas in my training. I understand the scale of a big company. I danced for one for almost 20 years.
I performed in Sydney some years ago for the Sydney Festival and I am just so pleased to be returning to the wonderful Sydney Opera House and also performing in Melbourne for the first time.
In my teens, I saw a terrible production of ‘Die Walkuere.’ To a person of 15, it was just awful, and it put me off for many years. Eventually I became an opera-goer, if not an opera buff.
Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.
I wasn’t cut out to be an opera singer, but it was a nice fantasy for a teenager growing up in Hungary during the Stalinist era.
Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.
Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards.
If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell 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.
My mom says that she caught me one day in front of the TV watching opera. I was trying to sing back the opera. She saw that I really liked music, and so she put me in piano lessons when I was about three years old.
One of our books has been made into a musical, ‘The Great American Mousical,’ which I directed at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And another, ‘Simeon’s Gift,’ has been adapted for a symphony orchestra and five performers. I’m also a very proud member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
I think my great-grandpa was an opera singer or something.
I really wanted to be an opera soprano.
When I’ve seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can’t tell you what that phenomenon is.
In 2015, an opera opened about me and Justice Antonin Scalia. It’s called ‘Scalia/Ginsburg.’ The composer, Derrick Wang, has degrees in music from Harvard and Yale. Enrolled in law school, he was reading dueling opinions by me and Justice Scalia and decided he could compose an appealing comic opera from them.
I love opera. I love jazz, especially Mingus. This makes me sound highbrow. I’m not.
In the ’80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.
I’ve always wanted to be on a soap opera.
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.
I’d always had this hankering to try some opera.
Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.
When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.
People who have passion for horror stories, their appreciation/my appreciation is looking at it as opera.
To be a famously successful opera singer. I wanted that since I was eight.
People perceive opera and classical as elitist – I disagree. I’ve always tried to mix the two, make it more accessible.
In opera, everyone’s watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn’t relate too much to film.
We used to listen to all the marvelous operas on records. Music was a very important part of our lives.
Since I was eight years old. I didn’t have a TV, so comic books were definitely my television, my soap operas, and all that.
That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that’s the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.
Actually I do not listen to much opera music.
I did ‘Doubt’ as a film, a play and an opera.
I sing what I sing. And that’s recitals and orchestra concerts. To appease – no, that’s not the right word – let’s say to satisfy – any opera urgings that my public has, I’ll put in an aria.
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.
Reality TV has totally destroyed soap operas. They’re gone. They used to be the biggest thing in the world – they’re gone.
Too often, it is presumed that young people will only like art that they can immediately relate to. Working-class students may be steered towards popular culture like hip-hop, new media and film on the basis that they will find older art forms such as opera or ballet irrelevant.
I’ve never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.
I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn’t perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.
I like soap opera acting. If it’s done really well, there’s nothing better. It’s old school. It’s like what those melodramas in the ’30s and ’40s were like.
I had been warned by other directors that opera is hell. The singers don’t want to do what you want.
Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera.
I’d really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.
I had been nominated for an Academy Award for my performance as Sandy Lester, Dustin Hoffman’s neurotic, struggling actress girlfriend, in ‘Tootsie.’ Under Sydney Pollack’s direction, ‘Tootsie’ had been a runaway hit starring Dustin as an unemployed actor who pretends to be a woman in order to land a role in a soap opera.
Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.
I felt frustrated by the limitations of rock and the lifestyle of touring around on a bus and playing the same songs over and over. So I went back to school to study music, and one of the things I got into was the Italian opera composer Puccini.
Gray means being open-minded. I always look at the world that way; I’m able to hear both sides of an argument. I don’t listen to opera, but I don’t think it’s good or bad; it’s just its own thing. I can completely appreciate it.
Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.
If you love epic space opera, you shouldn’t miss ‘Interstellar’.
Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
I auditioned for soap operas and commercials; I remember auditioning for Lays potato chips. It was a sort of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty‘ sketch, where Captain Bligh was torturing the crew by saying, ‘You can only have one Lays potato chip,’ and they all rise up.
My soap operas have been seen by a billion people all around the world.
I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.
Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It’s equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.
Unfortunately, opera engagements tend to be made five years in advance, and I don’t really agree with that.
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
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.
I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It’s all performance to me.
Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, ‘Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I auditioned for a soap!’
Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow.
I never wanted to be an opera singer. I wanted to be an actress, maybe a rock singer.
I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen – I’m grateful for it.
I decided I was going to be an opera star. I was about 12.
Because we’re in a small town and somewhat isolated from the fast lane of high tech, we’ve been able to grow and concentrate on our work instead of being distracted by the competition and getting caught up in the soap opera of Silicon Valley.
My father’s an opera nut, and my stepmother used to work at the Metropolitan Opera, so I had a lot of opera immersion. I like the grandness and pretention of it.
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.
Daytime soap operas, which I used to adore, have been declining in quality and importance for over a decade, and I gradually stopped monitoring them.
It was the late ’70s when my parents met. My dad was a lighting director for a soap opera, and my mom was a temp at the studio. They moved into a house in The Valley in L.A., to a neighborhood that was leafy and affordable.
I perform in opera houses in the centres of big cities. We live in 20 acres of forest. You need that space to recover and renew.
In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that’s not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.
My parents were both opera singers, and they also were both heavily into religious and church music.
It’s better to be on a soap opera to renew your career and following than to be on any other medium.
In my shows, I always try to incorporate music because it’s the most natural way to set a tone. So if I want to do a show about depression, I use the opera. If I want to do a show about greed, I use spoken word. If I want to do a show about the injustice that’s taking place in the world, I might play Sam Cooke.
I have the greatest fans. I have fans that come from soap opera world. I have fans that come from superhero world, which are a whole different section of fans. They’re so cool. When people are fanatical about something, it’s contagious.
‘Star Wars‘ is a grand soap opera, and ‘Star Trek‘ is about technology, they tried to explain the reality of it, as far-fetched as it might be. And that’s why I’ve always liked the science behind the fiction.
I know that my passion is for opera, but sometimes I like also to sing songs, because there are many beautiful melodies.
Styx was always a theatrical band. In fact, we played City Center in 1983 with a rock opera, ‘Kilroy Was Here.’
I’ve never been to the opera; I’ve only seen opera on DVD.
I’d like to direct more operas.
To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion – and above all, the passion.
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.
I would have loved to sing opera, but I have no voice. I used to sing along with records.
‘The Phantom of the Opera’ is about love. It’s as simple as that.
A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for our frequently vaunted future as a galactic society.
Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.
I couldn’t stand the politics in opera.
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.
I wasn’t the best in my class at the Royal Academy. There was a really good soprano and baritone who were technically better and are doing really well in opera now. But I was definitely the best mezzo-soprano in my class, because I was the only one of those!
I didn’t know I was going to go into musical theater necessarily. It was never planned. I just kind of fell into it because I knew I wanted to act, and yet I had this opera training… I knew I had a voice.
Opera should be a place for art forms to meet. I’ve worked a lot with Peter Gabriel; his music isn’t operatic, but he creates big, popular gatherings to which architecture, dance, and music are all invited.
I grew up with singers. My father’s mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can’t remember a time there wasn’t music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters – George Gershwin, Cole Porter – and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
I was not exposed to a lot of culture. The shows we saw in high school, like ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘Miss Saigon,’ were thrilling. But my love affair with theater started with seeing a production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors‘ that my sister was in.
My degree was in opera.
Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have.
It’s the perfect environment for prayer. Chanting in Greek… is like a beautiful opera, but way better.
When you conduct opera, you control the stage. But with a film, the film controls you.
To play opera, to play Wagner, it’s a great joy.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
I know I’m an opera singer, but we’re actors, too.
I have always felt an excellent rapport ever since my very first concert in Britain at Hampton Court. I have always felt understood. The British understand opera very well.
The fact that I could secure an opera engagement made me realize I had within me the making of an artist, if I would really labor for such an end. When I became thoroughly convinced of this, I was transformed from an amateur into a professional in a single day.
I think what we’ve been able to do with ‘Longmire’ is balance this procedural with a bit of a soap opera, and it’s a character study of this character, Walt Longmire, and the people around him.
Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it’s changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water‘s edge.
In the Broadway world, I’ve always wanted to play Valjean in ‘Les Mis’, since I’ve already played Gavroche. I’d also like to play the Phantom of the Opera, but I haven’t really thought about any film characters. You’ve got to have a whole lot of training for the Phantom role, vocally.
Do you think Duke Ellington didn’t listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn’t influenced by European music!
It used to take us six days to film an hour of ‘Gunsmoke.’ But I didn’t mind the fast pace of soap opera work. It was nice being able to shoot scenes in sequence. We couldn’t do that on ‘Gunsmoke.’
Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose?
I wish there was more for minorities than sitcoms. I’d like to see a soap opera about blacks. People don’t live in isolation anymore.
I’ve always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.
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.
I never dreamed of writing for concert or opera. I always dreamed, if I was a composer, to write music for films.
I think Mozart’s operas ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and ‘Don Giovanni’ are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.
I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money.
I sang opera, I sang show tunes. I got into a rock band for a while. I’ve sung a lot of different things.
Opera – above and beyond anything else – is about the music, and it should be about the music.
In Europe, it is not so unusual for directors to move between opera, theatre, and film, and I have at least three girlfriends I can think of who have directed in all three genres.
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
I enjoy listening to opera at home, occasionally, but I would much rather see it than just listen to it.
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.
Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me.
Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
When you come to my show, I want it to feel like opera, like a theatre.
I was one of the lucky people who found what I loved at a really young age. When I was 16, I got my first job in a Portuguese soap opera, and I realized how much I really loved it.
It was hard to make a living as an actor in New York if you did not do soap operas or commercials.
The jewellery I wear on stage in the opera house is not real, but the bling-bling I wear in concerts? Those are real!
People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe, met my dad, fell in love, and then moved back to Rome, where I was raised, between Rome and Hamburg.
Burton Cummings joining the Guess Who in January 1966 changed my life forever. It’s been a rocky affiliation, no doubt. One journalist once described our relationship as the longest running soap opera in Canadian history. That may be a bit oversimplified.
Lots of opera singers are just boring.
I think ‘Empire‘ is entertaining. It’s a soap opera. Does it touch on stereotypes? Sure, it does… I don’t know if that’s necessarily good or bad.
The theatre only knows what it’s doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years’ time? A completely different attitude.
We tend to forget that in those days before the Internet and HBO and Imax and 3-D cinema, opera was the thing. Opera and theatre. If you were a man of the world and you mingled among the happy few, you would be at the opera.
If I do a play, it’s my vision, and everybody else is working on the production to support that. If I do an opera, I feel like part of my job is to support that composer, to try and create something that allows the composer to do his or her best work. In movies, it’s usually the director.
I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I’m interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don’t listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it’s in a certain category, whether it’s country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.
The soap opera was so long ago – the thing about soap operas, and there’s something to be said for doing it, but you do a script a day. I don’t want to say it’s a training ground; it really isn’t, but what it does teach you is discipline.
I am a person. I am not a soap opera.
Regular church-goers are substantially more likely than non-attenders to read, to take newspapers and magazines, to listen to classical music, to attend symphony concerts, operas, and stage plays.
College football, acting, opera singing – I approached them all in the same obsessive way.
I sang opera for over four years when I was younger.
The most widely criticised singers in the history of opera, Maria Callas and Franco Corelli, happen also to be the best singers. I am honoured for being part of their group.
I sing a mixture of everything from opera, folk music, Broadway. It’s a mix of things.
One of the most wonderful memories in my life was when I sang at the Opera House in Sydney. I will never forget that. It is one of the most beautiful Houses I have ever sung in my life.
Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.
I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.
Since I was a child I’ve loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.
Before, there were only four pay per views throughout the whole year. Guys who were doing soap opera storylines could build them up week after week. We had longevity, and that is one of the main reasons why people remember.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people’s movies. I direct operas. I write books.
I find the opera part in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ challenging.
When I was in school, I was always writing scripts and dressing up as characters. I’d constantly be that guy who’d get up on stage. I used to write imaginary TV shows, like soap operas, for fun.
I wanted to be an opera singer since I was a very little girl.
I have also just finished three weeks on a soap opera in England. The soap opera is a rather famous one called Crossroads. It was first on television 25 years ago, and it has recently been brought back. I play the part of a businessman called David Wheeler.
I’ve been studying voice for quite a while, especially opera, for at least seven or eight years.
I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses.
I’ve always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto.
I had a schoolmaster who was a supernumerary at Glyndebourne Opera, and through ,I got a job as a walk-on in Peter Hall’s production of ‘Don Giovanni’ there in 1975 or 1976.
We got to see Sondheim shows, ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ ‘Cats’ and all sorts of stuff. When you’re 10 or 11 years old, it’s just magnificent. The story-telling, the music – it lifts you out of your seat.
Professionally, I did a couple of operas when I was in school, when I was 18.
When I come to reflect on the subject, in no country have I received such honors or been so esteemed as in Italy, and nothing contributes more to a man’s fame than to have written Italian operas, and especially for Naples.
All of our lives are enriched by our culture, from blockbuster films, best-selling video games, independent music, and internationally-renowned museums and art collections, to theatre, opera, ballet, literary festivals and performance poetry.
I’m an obsessive musical theatre person, so some of the most formative albums for me were, you know, the ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ soundtrack or ‘Into The Woods.’
It’s necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you’re dealing with more than one or two characters, it’s very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.
Operas elucidate, in a way sometimes absent in other theatrical productions, the very human fact that in every hero, there is a thread of duplicity. In every villain, there is another side to consider: We don’t have to like him or her, but we are compelled to think about motivation.
To be able to make a good living in a challenging medium like soap operas is great. The best is that I get to act and am rewarded for it. And the people I work with are great. Funny, intelligent, hard working. They’re all great to be around.
I have nothing but admiration for the actors on soap operas. It is unbelievably challenging to put out an hour show in one day.
My mom was an opera singer, and she gave up her career to raise a family. But she also taught my sisters how to sing.
I watched a lot of soap operas, when I was growing up, and a lot of those great serialized soap dramas.
Opera is really fun.
I’d hate this to get out but I really like opera.
But I won’t deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.
There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That’s not necessarily true and hasn’t been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger.
I grew up with singers. My father’s mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can’t remember a time there wasn’t music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters – George Gershwin, Cole Porter – and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
Dance stories, unlike those in opera, are usually simple.
My parents were opera singers. I didn’t want to play opera because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I’m so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don’t like every song I write.
I was on the soap opera ‘Days of our Lives.’
I wanted to be Whitney Houston at first, and when I started taking voice lessons, my voice teacher kind of geared me more towards opera.
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
I don’t know, a lot of people go crazy about ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I don’t like the soap opera aspect of it and only following one character. I like the context to all of it, all the pieces, like ‘The Wire.’ It’s more about the state of things; it’s not about the narrative of a person.
I like folk songs, but ten horses couldn’t bring me to a concert or an opera.
I want to write theater pieces, opera, or some kind of amalgamation where there is singing, music and theater.
I’ve just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, ‘Here Lies Arthur,’ and I’m currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera ‘Larklight.’
Having the games on TV, I’ve always believed it’s like watching a soap opera – fans can’t wait for the next episode.
Opera is for a lifetime, not just a minute.
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.
I am rooted in flamenco. At 13, I fell in love with it, but I couldn’t sing it. To sing flamenco is like being a kind of opera singer. You have to learn how.
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 only use my sick days for hang-overs and soap opera weddings.
Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it.
I was 11 and watching soap operas with my mom, and I thought it would be cool to be an actor. I thought soap operas was going to be the dream at the time – it’s obviously now not the dream, but I think soap operas are really cool. Maybe I’ll go back to that.
Crazy as it sounds, I’m a believer in destiny and serendipity, and I have had cosmic experiences all my life. Something told me I was meant for greater stuff. And look, I’ve had a baby! And I’ve written an opera!
Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.
I go to the opera. It’s mostly my wife that’s a bigger fan, I’d say, than I am. I like the big opera. I want a lot of people on stage, elephants and marching stuff, and the modern stuff I don’t care for.
To this day, I adore classical music, and I’m very interested in opera, which I found out later my father was also extremely fond of.
I don’t mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand.
I was the first movie star to plunge into night-time soap opera.
I’m actually doing what I like doing, which is mixing opera music and classical music with soul and folk. And I was writing and talking about what I’ve actually experienced, and I don’t think that’s very common.
My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.
The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they’re not too ridiculously expensive.
One of the first things I created was music for the Paris opera’s ballet troupe. That was the first time that electronic music was played at the opera. I really like the relationship between the music and the choreography.
I don’t like reality shows and have never watched them, but I’m addicted to ‘Real Housewives‘ because it’s authentic old-time soap opera reborn!
You have to think about the WWE as soap operas.
Music and opera are a big part of my life.
Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.
I never pictured myself as a telenovela galan – never imagined I’d be in a soap opera.
As a young man, I wooed, unsuccessfully, with Puccini. It’s important to get your operas right.
My mom was on a soap opera for 40 years, so I know about love and romance.
I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera.
As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly.
‘Rigoletto’ has long been one of my favorite operas, and it was on my short list way back when I first talked to Peter Gelb. I started thinking about what I could bring to this masterpiece, which has been seen all over the world for so many years.
You can make a debut in 25 operas. But to make a debut at the Metropolitan Opera is huge.
My mom was an opera singer. She did all the classical music, and I heard it. I know every opera. I know every classical piece of music.
My father was a welder on the second-highest sail, so the Opera House has a special place in my heart.
I’d been trained in choral, gospel, and a little bit of opera.
You can’t get down and dirty at the opera.
I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn’t make no difference what color they were.
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.
I think sometimes when you speak about something like ‘Indian classical music’ and ‘ragas,’ and all of that’s new to people, it can be quite intimidating, in the same way that I have sometimes found opera and Wagner intimidating – one doesn’t know where to begin sometimes.
You can be born with the talent to be an opera star, but you’ve got to work and practice it.
I’m not glamorous, I don’t have a look, I don’t know anything about opera, I have no Italian, and I’m too old.
As a piano player, if 10 is concert level, I’d put myself at a 5 or a 6, but in a completely different genre than classical or opera. In terms of classical and opera, playing accompaniment, I’d say I was a 3.
As a child, I was always making sound; it was a compulsion. I loved to scream and yell and sing; it freed me from all the thoughts in my head. I begged for opera lessons because opera singing is the most formidable, most emotional way to use your voice.
It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera.
The thing about Wagner is we’re always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can’t represent both views on stage at once.
One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name.
If I can do concert recitals, adapting the repertoire to my needs, then no problem, that’s good enough. But with operas, unless the right circumstances come up, my career is done.
If work isn’t rooted in comedy, people will turn from it, or they’ll use it like soap opera.
It’s very much like opera singers. They do the same thing. The first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, the thing they think about is their voice and how to take care of it.
I don’t rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.
I love to play. I love, opera, hiking and museums. The one thing I don’t do is sit. I have a tremendous amount of energy.
I never learned music. I’m quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I’d done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they’re living in a soap opera.
I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid.
For me, few things are more compelling than watching a great opera.
You don’t have to make a grand, exaggerated sound to sing opera.
Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.
‘Friends’ played in this territory of being funny, and then also just grabbing your heart. And not afraid of that. It was a comedic soap opera. Not being afraid to have an audience feel something, laugh and cry, was quite extraordinary and quite wonderful.
Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
