The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself
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.
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.
I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.
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.
...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.
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.
I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.
I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.
Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It's equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.
We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.
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.
If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window.
Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life.
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 don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy.
An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
The real exertion in the case of an opera singer lies not so much in her singing as in her acting of a role, for nearly every modern opera makes great dramatic and physical demands.
Some may say that I couldn't sing, but no one can say that I didn't sing.
If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.
The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. [On Lohengrin]
When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.
They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
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