Opera Quotes - Page 8

• . . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

  Laurie Anderson

  Book, Yes You Can, Ideas

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• Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms, loitered by these windows, choosing their future boudoirs from some resplendent display which included even a man's silk pajamas laid domestically across the bed. They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked out their engagement rings, and their wedding rings and their platinum wrist watches, and then drifted on to inspect the feather fans and opera cloaks; meanwhile digesting the sandwiches and Sundaes they had eaten for lunch.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Girl, Men, Ice Cream

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (Fitzgerald’s Greatest Short Stories): A Collection of short stories from the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.29, e-artnow

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• The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

  Marianne Faithfull

  Singing, Firsts, Callas

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• 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.

  Bruce Beresford

  Challenges, Viewpoints, Too Much

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• Politics, poverty, riches, etc - these are but backdrops for the grand cinema, the opera: the glory of your life. Sure, change the backdrops, make them better, but it is this inside-ness that matters most. Nothing else, at the last breath, matters, but your very own poetry. The glory of living.

  Alex Ebert

  Cinema, Matter, Riches

  FaceBook post by Alex Ebert from Sep 16, 2013

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• 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.

  Chris Cornell

  House, Week, Voodoo

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• The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

  Bruce Beresford

  Song, Revival, Endless

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• Even the Beatles lived their lives as a soap opera.

  Chris Lowe

  Soap, Soap Operas

  "The Pet Shop Boys' Commandments". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2003.

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• If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni.

  W. H. Auden

  Queens, Character, Home

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• Theatre and opera were always the twin kingdoms that I felt I had to conquer, because they were my parents' favorites.

  Diane Paulus

  Parent, Theatre, Kingdoms

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes...After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public.

  Frederic Chopin

  Song, Play, People

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• 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.

  Johnny Mathis

  Morning, Night, Thinking

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• When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place.

  Lucy Lawless

  Daughter, Commitment, Singers

  "Television Q&A". St. Petersburg Times, April 11, 1998.

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• Soap operas are such a great way to break-in to the industry. The diminishing landscape of daytime TV means its going to be harder for young talent to get discovered.

  Josh Duhamel

  Mean, Way, Soap

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• 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.

  Aleksa Palladino

  Mom, Artist, Parent

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• Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.

  Peter Mullan

  Thinking, People, Interesting

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• Opera is for a lifetime, not just a minute.

  Kiri Te Kanawa

  Lifetime, Minutes

  "Portrait of the artist: Kiri Te Kanawa". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. August 17, 2009.

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• The important prediction is not the automobile, but the parking problem; not radio, but the soap opera; not the income tax, but the expense account; not the Bomb, but the nuclear stalemate

  Isaac Asimov

  Important, Income, Nuclear

  Isaac Asimov (1972). “From earth to heaven”

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• It heartens me to think of Verdi who composed thundering operas in his eighties; Michelangelo who did fine work in his ninetieth year, and Titian, who painted better than ever in his one hundredth.

  James A. Michener

  Work, Thinking, Years

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• In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.

  Lea Salonga

  Song, Book, Missing

  "SOUND OFF Special Interview: Lea Salonga". Interview with Pat Cerasaro, www.broadwayworld.com. November 11, 2010.

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• The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever.

  Bruce Beresford

  Song, Art, Numbers

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• Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in them; because I was a militant suffragette and seized a chance of beating time to The March of the Women from the window of my cell in Holloway Prison with a tooth-brush; because I have written books, spoken speeches, broadcast, and don't always make sure that my hat is on straight; for these and other equally pertinent reasons, in a certain sense I am well known.

  Ethel Smyth

  Dog, Book, Winter

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• 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.

  Tyne Daly

  Italian, Looks, Glamorous

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience.

  Joseph Addison

  Design, Attention, May

  Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.16

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• Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.

  Diane Paulus

  Art, Drama, Singing

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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