Opera Quotes - page 16

Vasyl was supposed to become my vocal adviser in my future project. For three years Slipak was a soloist at the Grand Opera. He got solo parts, but he also wanted to have concert practice, that is why he chose a sort of freelance. Mind you, when the war in the east of Ukraine broke out, his vocal career was on the rise. Characteristically, Vasyl did not give up his career, he would be active as a volunteer, then he would return from Ukraine to France to give concerts and appear in performances, and then again he would go to Ukraine, which he loved above all. And then again more concerts, and again back to the front. (Vasyl Slipak)
Since Russia started its aggressive actions against Ukraine he quit his European career and returned to Ukraine (as a volunteer soldier) to defend his homeland. He died in the ranks of the nationalist group Right Sector at the frontline in the Donetsk region. His nom de guerre was Myth – a shortened version from Mephistopheles (the Faust opera). He was not a professional soldier, he was a singer... View quote
Vasyl Slipak
When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera. View quote
Kevin Spacey
I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera. View quote
Robert Ashley
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. View quote
Camille Paglia
I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul. View quote
Frances Burney
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. View quote
Chris Cornell
In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket. View quote
Mikhail Baryshnikov
I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience. Then you arrive in the States and it is $150 to go to an opera. Ridiculous. We have so much young talent on the streets, but because everything is commercial they finally drift away from their dream of their life. View quote
Mikhail Baryshnikov
I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked. View quote
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Actually, like the vast majority of Australians, I had been born and raised in a city, but in the British imagination at that time the whole of Australia was still the outback, which was somehow equipped with a beach. Later on, this outback beach acquired an Opera House and a row of brick bungalows, one of them occupied by Kylie Minogue. (Clive James)
To me [Sydney Opera House] looks like a portable typewriter full of oyster shells, and to the contention that it echoes the sails of yachts on the harbour I can only point out that the yachts on the harbour don't waste any time echoing opera houses. View quote
Clive James
He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you. View quote
Oscar Wilde
The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera. View quote
John Marshall
I became a set designer for opera. View quote
Maurice Sendak
I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out. View quote
Maurice Sendak
The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision. View quote
Stewart Copeland
In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event. View quote
Stewart Copeland
My dad became a soap opera actor, and I was an extra in a skating rink scene on the soap. I didn't audition. It was nepotism all the way. View quote
Jennifer Aniston
Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears. View quote
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
My parents were opera singers and voice teachers, so growing up, I admired musicians and dancers. (Sandra Bullock)
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. View quote
Andy Grove
A cabaret song has got to be written - for the middle voice, ideally - because you've got to hear the wit of the words. And a cabaret song gives the singer room to act, more even than an opera singer. View quote
James Fenton
... overdramatizing the word of God, turning the Scriptures into a cross between a German opera and a hockey game. View quote
Tom Robbins
The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. The corps de ballet were already calling me "the Phantom of the Opera," an intriguing sobriquet which appealed to me very strongly, until I realized that it would mean signing my ransom notes P.T.O. One did not wish to descend to the ridiculous! O.G. I became and O.G. I have remained. But I still liked to think of myself as the Phantom. View quote
Susan Kay