Top 100 Quotes About Opera
#1. 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.
G.K. Chesterton
#2. The jewellery I wear on stage in the opera house is not real, but the bling-bling I wear in concerts? Those are real!
Anna Netrebko
#3. Opera is full of trappings that make us go away from being human. You can't let them do that. You can't walk like you're in an opera! You have to make it real. You have to just be there.
Charles Nelson Reilly
#4. If work isn't rooted in comedy, people will turn from it, or they'll use it like soap opera.
Israel Horovitz
#5. 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
#6. Whenever I go to New York I try to soak up as much live music as I can, including as many nights at the opera as I can manage.
Garth Greenwell
#7. Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [ ... ] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera.
Meg Jay
#9. I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.
Donna Leon
#10. 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.
Andrea Bocelli
#11. 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.'
Allison Williams
#12. 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.
Nina Arianda
#13. 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.
Parker Posey
#14. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva
Josh Groban
#15. Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.
Bruce Beresford
#16. My grandmother's life had been one long opera. There had been drama, heroes, villains, improbable twists, all that. But most of all there had been love, great big waves of it, crashing ceaselessly against the rocks of life, bearing us all back to grace.
Alex George
#17. People who go to the Opera, they don't go to the toilet, not even at home.
Martin Amis
#19. Opera tells stories that all ages can relate to: love, death, revenge, etc.
Sondra Radvanovsky
#20. Politics in a democratic society should not be treated like a baseball game, a game show or a soap opera. The times are too serious for that.
Bernie Sanders
#21. A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.
William Devane
#22. You can be born with the talent to be an opera star, but you've got to work and practice it.
Iris Apfel
#23. I see a symphony - and sometimes a grand opera - of elements that can be coordinated and harmonized to create a fantastic and memorable experience.
Marc J. Sievers
#24. Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.
David Edelstein
#25. Misery loves company. This is a Hollywood soap opera, and I'm not going to be a star in another Bryant soap opera.
Karl Malone
#26. Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.
Neville Marriner
#27. I've been singing my whole life, since I was a kid; but never formally as a career. I did it in plays when I was younger, and I sang all styles of music: everything from Italian opera to blues.
Brittany Murphy
#28. I remember once saying in a television interview that the only things I hadn't been in were the opera and the ballet. Two days later, I got a call from Lord Harewood, of the English National Opera, saying "Would you like to be in 'Ariadne auf Naxos?'"
Donald Sinden
#29. A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.
Renee Fleming
#31. Do good works or commission an opera house or just take it out and gaze at it longingly when you think of the handsome prince you might have made your own. For the record, I favor the latter option, preferably paired with copious tears and the recitation of bad poetry.
Leigh Bardugo
#32. You hear about Broadway your whole life, and I learned what it meant to work on Broadway in 'The Phantom of the Opera.'
Aaron Lazar
#33. 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.
Bruce Beresford
#34. I love Italian opera - it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.
D.H. Lawrence
#35. Miss Blanche Heyward, opera dancer, would have made a superlative drill sergeant if she had just been a man.
Mary Balogh
#36. Dictatorship is always merely an aria, never an opera.
Emil Ludwig
#37. Opera is the most complete art form. It includes drama, acting, technology (lighting), art (the sets), dance, and the epitome of the human voices. But mostly, go for the glorious music. The arts are crucial to the life of every community.
Karen DeCrow
#38. 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.'
Philip Reeve
#39. As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.
Sarah Caldwell
#40. The genuine music lover may accept the carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of actual music within, but that is no sign that he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing through it.
H.L. Mencken
#41. For every reader, like me, who scheduled his/her classes around their favorite soap opera.
Elisabeth Naughton
#42. I was singing when I was five years old. My sister and I both had the talent from mom and dad, and she was in opera and I was into pop and uh, rhythm and blues, anything, I was about a four octave singer.
Carl Gardner
#43. Off this fucking predictable soap opera, this will happen now, then that, then that and you say that you are christian and you start watching series of Turkey people which believe in a very different god so far god of hell - Allah...
Deyth Banger
#44. One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group.
Lesley Garrett
#45. the very judicious plan of dividing the two acts of the opera with a ballet,
Alexandre Dumas
#46. In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month.
Renee Fleming
#47. My message is to forget about dichotomies. The 'Brain Opera' is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voice - so I do consider it an opera.
Tod Machover
#48. 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.
Jack Dangermond
#49. Without Puccini, there is no opera; without opera, the world is an even drearier place than the evening news would have us think.
William Berger
#50. I hop onto the stage and joke-sing: "The Phaaaanntom of the Opera is there, innnnnside your mind." I attack the curtain with a flourish and sing on, "innnnside your mind.
Anne Eliot
#51. Wasn't it his right to listen to opera, read poetry and adventure novels, go to Europe every couple of months for some reason or another, and drive his Porsche over the speed limit until he found out who he was?
Anne Rice
#52. When I do concerts and recitals, the two most common requests are spirituals and opera.
Kathleen Battle
#54. I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know in any other medium. And they don't get very much approbation for it.
Joan Collins
#55. When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.
Maximilian Schell
#56. Normally our season is seven weeks in the Drama Theatre and four weeks in the Opera Theater.
Graeme Murphy
#57. I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
Maurice Sendak
#58. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
Oscar Wilde
#59. 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.
Gael Garcia Bernal
#60. 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
#61. I love musicals; I love the ballet, opera, the circus. It's all performance to me.
Ian McKellen
#62. 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.
Robert Gottlieb
#63. Opera is given so little attention in the national press.
Carlisle Floyd
#64. Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have. People want to know what happens next, people hate the villains and love the lovers. It's good, fun TV. But I wouldn't call 'Downton' a soap opera as such.
Dan Stevens
#65. I enrolled in an acting workshop and my first acting role was on the TV soap opera 'Melrose Place.'
Famke Janssen
#66. I love film scores and opera, and I wanted to work in those forms. But theater was more accessible. And no one was doing this in the late 1970s, when I began working in the theater. So, I have written scores for thirteen plays, which are not musicals, but straight plays.
Jeff Britting
#67. Four billion years ago the planet Earth was molten rock; now it sings opera!
Brian Swimme
#68. My dream is to be played everywhere, not only at the Opera.
Erik Satie
#69. 'Gone With The Wind' is one of the all-time greats. Read Margaret Mitchell's book and watch the film again; it's a soap opera in all its glory. It is superb and memorable.
Timothy Dalton
#70. 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.
Javier Bardem
#71. It would be great to do a rock opera, but using more low-fi technology. I love shitty-sounding records.
Billie Joe Armstrong
#73. 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.
Sam Taylor-Johnson
#74. Opera combines pretty basic theater and poetry, but the storyline itself is actually quite poetic and, after some digital research, taking that actual content and seeing it as undeniably poetic.
John Darnielle
#75. Exposing impressionable young men to the glories of opera on their first evening at home with you tended to put the kiss of death on things, as Oliver, to his cost, had discovered over the years.
Anthony McDonald
#76. The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
Jean De La Bruyere
#77. 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.
Trevor Nunn
#78. I'm just a normal person. It's not like I come home and think about opera. My thoughts are about completely other things. Shoes! Dresses! Expensive ones: with a pretty silhouette, beautiful fabrics.
Anna Netrebko
#79. The only thing I daydreamed about was being an opera singer. But I was so skinny and so pathetic that that sort of wasn't going to happen.
Patti Smith
#80. Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.
Gaston Leroux
#81. Simon's dark eyes were serious. "I trust you," he said "I don't trust him." He cut his glance toward Jace, who was walking a few paces ahead of them, apparently conversing with the cat. Clary wondered what they were talking about. Politics? Opera? The high price of tuna?
Cassandra Clare
#82. Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.
John Philip Sousa
#83. When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging.
Placido Domingo
#84. My fist is her flag still furled. Take the cannoli and leave the tuxedo - This is my jackleg opera to the world.
B.J. Ward
#85. I was more of a light opera singer, not really much of a lounge singer.
Melinda Clarke
#86. I love comedy and drama equally and music too. I just sort of follow my nose to whatever seems really exciting at the time. Eventually, I might want to do a rock opera.
Jack Black
#87. 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.
Michael Weatherly
#88. My family was very musical. My brother is an opera singer; my parents both sang.
Blythe Danner
#89. My parents were opera singers and voice teachers, so growing up, I admired musicians and dancers.
Sandra Bullock
#90. The opera always loses money. That's as it should be. Opera has no business making money.
Rudolf Bing
#91. 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
#92. For more than 13,000 days on the run, my life was a soap opera.
Ronald Biggs
#93. I tend to sing opera and showtunes in the shower. I don't know why, but when I get in the shower I turn into this big fat opera lady.
Ester Dean
#94. H is for Hardware store: I'd rather go to the hardware store than the opera. And I like the opera.
Marlene Dietrich
#95. For me, few things are more compelling than watching a great opera.
David Rubenstein
#96. I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.
Nina Arianda
#97. I guess I am running the risk of becoming the Hans Christian Andersen of opera.
Gian Carlo Menotti
#98. I don't necessarily make much art myself, but after I wrote 'Warped Passages,' I was fortunate to get involved a little in the art world. I got invited to write a libretto for what we called a projective opera, and I also got invited to curate an art exhibit.
Lisa Randall
#99. My first offer was when I was 12, and it was for a soap opera. And I turned it down because I knew that I was an unformed actor, and I didn't want to develop bad habits.
Claire Danes
#100. I have stared long enough at the glowing flat rectangles of computer screens. Let us give more time for doing things in the real world ... plant a plant, walk the dogs, read a real book, go to the opera.
Edward R. Tufte
