Opera Quotes - Page 17

• Growing up, for years and years I had no idea what the plots of operas were, and that's part of what fascinated me - I could make them up and learn bits and pieces of what was going on over time. There's something about it being always a step away that makes it more fun to chase.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Growing Up, Fun, Years

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When you sing opera you are very far from the people, you are onstage, and between you and the people there is the orchestra. So you have to launch your emotions very, very far. When you sing pop, you are singing very close - the microphone is very close to your mouth. You can whisper your emotions into the microphone.

  Andrea Bocelli

  People, Singing, Mouths

  "Q&A: On new album, Bocelli celebrates the music of movies". The Associated Press Interview, wtop.com. October 30, 2015.

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• I really thought I wanted to be a musical-comedy star, but I lived in Phoenix and didn't want to go all the way to New York and be that far away from home. So I thought maybe I'd be a rock 'n' roll singer or an opera singer.

  Sandra Bernhard

  New York, Stars, Home

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across.

  Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Ideas, House, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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

  Anthony Geary

  Character, Soap, Said

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• The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Years, Together, Lasts

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• The music of this opera (Madame Butterfly) was dictated to me by God. I was merely instrumental in getting it on paper and communicating it to the public.

  Giacomo Puccini

  Butterfly, Paper, Communicate

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• Opera is music AND drama. I'm prepared to sacrifice the beautiful note for the meaningful sound any time... I can make a pretty tone as well as anyone, but there are times when the drama of a scene demands the opposite of a pretty sound.

  Beverly Sills

  Beautiful, Meaningful, Drama

  Beverly Sills (1981). “Bubbles: an encore”

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• I look for stories that tell transformative, emotional journeys, have big emotional worlds, feel very relevant and true to the times we're living in - even though they might be of a different time - have a sense of real intimacy with larger forces at work, where there's some kind of social injustice and inequity happening that needs to be conquered or addressed. I find historically that's the formula for a lot of successful operas.

  Jake Heggie

  Real, Successful, Emotional

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• If you look at Marriage of Figaro or Butterfly or Traviata, all of those elements are in there. I also have to have a very specific location in mind. The physical environment of where the opera takes place is very key - the "sound world."

  Jake Heggie

  Butterfly, Keys, Mind

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• I have a lot of projects I get asked for, but the opera house really is my house - my home. It's where I feel comfortable and confident and I get to explore these big human stories and dramas and collaborate with extraordinary people, great talented artists and administrators and other people who are passionate about it and support it. It's like working with a great big family - the family you love and enjoy being with all the time.

  Jake Heggie

  Drama, Home, Artist

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• There's no rational reason why opera should exist. It's expensive, time consuming. Yet in some shape or other it has always existed.

  Jake Heggie

  Shapes, Reason Why, Should

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• We've always told stories through music and rhythm and movement, and what we know as western opera has only been around for a few hundred years and in different forms before that. There is great passion regardless of the fact that it's expensive and people who invest in it are giving money because they believe in it. They're not getting anything back other than satisfaction and enjoyment of hopefully many people having a human, deep, reflective and meditative experience that at its core is incredibly emotional.

  Jake Heggie

  Believe, Passion, Emotional

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of versimilitude.

  Robertson Davies

  Writing, People, Seductive

  Robertson Davies (1986). “The papers of Samuel Marchbanks”, Viking, 1986

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• One good thing about a good book or a good film, or maybe even a song, I'm not a musician but I love to listen to music, is the range that each piece is able to give you. Like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen, 1975, that song is so epic. It goes in so many different places, it's and opera and it is heavy metal, and it's so crazy as it goes every which way. I kind of like films like that.

  Kleber Mendonca Filho

  Song, Queens, Crazy

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• I think I will always feel a special relationship with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, because for me it was something very, very special. It was a modern opera, and to play the heroine in a film that became such a success at a young age, and learning from him when I was so young and impressionable - really it was one of my most important experiences.

  Catherine Deneuve

  Thinking, Play, Special

  Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2005.

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• The opera isn't over until the fat lady sings.

  Dick Motta

  Fats

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• Once, when we were playing at the Apollo Theater, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don't know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph.

  Ella Fitzgerald

  Block, Holiday, House

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• Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

  Heather O'Neill

  Song, Believe, Garden

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.134, Hachette UK

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• You're just being cryptic again. It's like soap opera sex. Lots of boring dialogue and when they finally do go to bed, everything's dark and covered by blankets.

  Ragnar Tørnquist

  Sex, Dark, Bed

  "Fictional character: April Ryan". "The Longest Journey" (Video Game), www.imdb.com. 1999.

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• I just adored Peter Medak, the director. He's such a character, but he was so much fun. Some directors come in and they truly get angry about things.Peter was still in a fantastic mood. He's a delightful person. He threw a big party at the end of the pilot, which was so sweet. And his wife is an opera singer. He's just a very warm, crazy beautiful individual.

  Brigid Brannagh

  Beautiful, Sweet, Fun

  Source: collider.com

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• Dare to be honest and fear no labor. ... Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

  Robert Burns

  Men, Dying, Honest

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• 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

  Cab Calloway

  Thinking, Color, Voice

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• Baseball is a soap opera that plays out day after day, one that a lot of elderly women watch until the characters and the plot becomes a part of their life. She got to enjoy the personal side of the players. They were her kids. The Braves were her family.

  Bob Hope

  Baseball, Character, Kids

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• People don't want to pay 8 or 9 dollars to go see a problem that they have in their life, on screen. They pay to get away from that. That's why they watch soap operas

  Omar Epps

  People, Watches, Dollars

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