Opera Quotes - Page 13

• My works are a direct response to the typical space opera. I grew tired of always reading about how the people with power, with agency, get involved in huge sweeping arcs of stories. I wanted stories that dealt with real people, people I could relate to.

  Nathan Lowell

  Real, Reading, Tired

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• Britten's opera tends to see things in simpler terms. It portrays an Aschenbach who wants a richer form of sexual fulfillment, and who is hemmed in by the social conventions to which he subscribes. But Visconti's use of the Mahler Adagietto is perfect for what I take to be Aschenbach's sexual desire.

  Philip Kitcher

  Perfect, Desire, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• So my methodological approach is to draw on many different features in highlighting different facets of the novella (and the opera and the film).

  Philip Kitcher

  Different, Film, Draws

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• First, my frame of reference for the Britten opera shifted. I'd always thought of Britten's approach in Death in Venice as another exploration of the plight of the individual whose aspirations are at odds with those of the surrounding community: his last opera returning to the themes of Peter Grimes. As I read and listened and thought, however, Billy Budd came to seem a more appropriate foil for Death in Venice.

  Philip Kitcher

  Odds, Venice, Community

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in Venice struck me forcefully, so that, when I was invited to give the Schoff Lectures at Columbia, the opportunity to reflect on the contrasts between novella and opera seemed irresistible.

  Philip Kitcher

  Philosophical, Opportunity, Venice

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

  Henry Miller

  Night, Symphony, Years

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

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• He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.

  Ann Patchett

  Opportunity, Tchaikovsky, True Life

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• Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  "Living In The Present Is A Disorder". Interview with R.U. Sirius, www.wired.com. April 8, 2013.

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• 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.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Thanksgiving, Thankful

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• Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.

  Gaston Leroux

  Soul, Tonight, Gaston

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• In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Real, Hopeless, Aria

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Timequake”, p.111, Random House

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• I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

  J. D. Salinger

  Liars, Memorable, Magazines

  J. D. SALINGER (1951). “THE CATCHER IN THE RYE”

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• My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

  Frank O'Hara

  Running, Heart, Feet

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.231, Univ of California Press

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• You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

  David Markson

  Sex, Reading, Two

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• Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost.

  Gaston Leroux

  Heart, Play, Unhappy

  Gaston Leroux (2016). “THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Mystery & Horror Series): Gothic Classic Based on True Events at the Paris Opera”, p.201, e-artnow

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• Sometime during the 1990s, when I was teaching philosophy at UCSD, my friend, colleague, and music teacher, Carol Plantamura, discussed the possibility of teaching a course together looking at ways in which various literary works (plays, stories, novels) had been treated as operas, and how different themes emerged in the opera and in its original. One of the pairings we planned to use was Mann's great novella and Britten's opera. Unfortunately, the course was never taught, but the idea remained with me.

  Philip Kitcher

  Teacher, Philosophy, Teaching

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If you want to do other things, you have to leave soap operas, otherwise you'll be there forever, which is not bad, you know. Some people have made a great living off of being on soap operas. But if you want to branch out you have to leave early, otherwise you'll never get the shot.

  Jackee Harry

  People, Forever, Branches

  "Jackée Harry on 227, Ladybugs, and why she wants to be the next Maggie Smith". Interview with Marah Eakin, tv.avclub.com. February 26, 2016.

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• The show is escapism. If you look back to when I was in college, all the girls in the sorority houses were gathered around watching soap operas. That was the escapism, the show that was giving you something you couldn't have. Now, you go into any sorority house, there are 50 to 100 girls piled in watching The Bachelor. We are the modern-day soap opera.

  Chris Harrison

  Girl, College, Giving

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• A ghost who, on the same evening, carries off an opera-singer and steals twenty-thousand francs is a ghost who must have his hands very full!

  Gaston Leroux

  Hands, Twenties, Singers

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• Goodness gracious me,” exclaimed Alexia, “what are you wearing? It looks like the unfortunate progeny of an illicit union between a pair of binoculars and some opera glasses. What on earth are they called, binocticals, spectaculars?” The earl snorted his amusement and then tried to pretend he hadn't. “How about glassicals?” he suggested, apparently unable to resist a contribution.

  Gail Carriger

  Glasses, Looks, Amusement

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• Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.

  Brian Aldiss

  Fun, Real, Space

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• I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera.

  Marian Keyes

  Jobs, Writing, Soap

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• I was not especially enthusiastic about opera when I was young, and I thought I would never write one. I felt it was an art form of the past, with expensive singers exposing their high notes, and bad theater, and ridiculous stories which don't concern us. But then little by little I realized that it can be defined very differently, that on the contrary opera can be something profound and not superficial - a wonderful meeting point for all the other arts.

  Kaija Saariaho

  Art, Writing, Past

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen - I'm grateful for it. I studied diction, breathing control, phrasing, why the song means something. You want to bring that across to your listeners.

  Ledisi

  Song, Grateful, Mean

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