Opera Quotes - Page 24

• There were a few things that went into it. When you're doing something you're trying to be your audience at the same time, so if somebody tells me that this is a movie about retired opera singers, you think 'maybe I'll wait for it to come to DVD'. You're not rushing off to see it.

  Dustin Hoffman

  Thinking, Dvds, Rushing

  "Quartet - Dustin Hoffman interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining.

  Edward Abbey

  Speaks Out, Shopping, Rivers

  Edward Abbey (1988). “One Life at a Time, Please”, p.172, Macmillan

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• It is not always a matter of wild ovations and legendary performances. Sometimes you are just happy to get through an opera without trouble.

  Luciano Pavarotti

  Ovation, Matter, Sometimes

  Luciano Pavarotti (1995). “Pavarotti, My World”, Crown Pub

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• The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.

  Yo-Yo Ma

  Artist, Thinking, Citizens

  Interview with Elijah Ho, www.thecounterpoints.com. January 7, 2013.

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• And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals my old and valued friends Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten.

  Oliver Sacks

  Dream, Memories, Confused

  "Uncle Tungsten". Book by Oliver Sacks, 2001.

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• I pass for a hypersensitive, reclusive neurotic, which I may well be, but I hope the year won't come when my anxieties and fatigue will destroy my love of this life, of all the things that inspire me--a line of music, a face in a Vermeer portrait, a character in an opera, or a model born in Harlem.

  Yves Saint Laurent

  Character, Years, Anxiety

  Yves Saint Laurent (1983). “Catalog of the Exhibition Held at the Costume”, p.22, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

  Richard Wagner

  Art, Drama, Mean

  Richard Wagner (1966). “Prose works”

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• Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.

  Sinclair Lewis

  War, Shoes, Needs

  Sinclair Lewis (1915). “The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life”

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• Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

  David Hume

  Ocean, Gay, Thinking

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.4068, Delphi Classics

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• The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini 's Turandot or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva.

  Josh Groban

  Stars, Echoes, Rocks

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• A resolution to attend theatres or operas is an absolute disqualification for Holy Orders.

  Samuel Wilberforce

  Order, Theatre, Resolution

  "The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll". Book by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, p. 74, 1898.

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• The arts were a big part of my childhood. We went to the theatre and opera a lot as a family. We were not at all wealthy, but it was at a time when the arts were publicly funded and there were free tickets available. For someone like myself who wasn't that academically inclined, it was a great escape.

  Sarah Jessica Parker

  Art, Childhood, Theatre

  "The Family Stone - Sarah Jessica Parker interview" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.

  Philip Johnson

  Years, People, House

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• Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.

  C. L. R. James

  Ballet, Theatre, Firsts

  "Beyond a Boundary". Book by C. L. R. James, 1963.

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• I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical periods in my life.

  Gunther Schuller

  Years, Musical, Orchestra

  "Listen Back To A 1988 Conversation With Composer Gunther Schuller". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. June 22, 2015.

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• Liverpool's grand opera also gave us some light comedy - on hearing the news that the house of goalkeeper Pepe Reina was burgled, and his Porsche stolen, while he was heroically saving penalties at Anfield, fans took a typically witty line: police were said to be interviewing a man from the West London area, a certain Frank Lampard, whose whereabouts on Tuesday between 7.45pm and 10.15pm are unknown. Indeed.

  Declan Lynch

  Soccer, Football, Witty

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• One gets, sensitive about losing mornings after getting a little used to them with living in a country. Each one of these endlessly varied daybreaks is an opera but once performed.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Country, Morning, Littles

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• I have sat through an Italian opera, til, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded street, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention!

  Charles Lamb

  Music, Pain, Italian

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.193, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.

  Margot Asquith

  Book, Play, Long

  Margot Asquith (1933). “More Memories”

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• Opera is an extremely disciplined art form, and every excess a singer indulges in has a direct effect on the voice.

  Beverly Sills

  Art, Indulge In, Direct Effect

  "Beverly: An Autobiography". Book by Lawrence Linderman, 1987.

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• If anything can be invented more excruciating than an English Opera, such as was the fashion at the time I was in London, I am sure no sin of mine deserves the punishment of bearing it.

  Margaret Fuller

  Fashion, Punishment, London

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Woman in the 19th century, and kindred papers relating to the sphere, condition, and duties of woman”, p.188

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• You could probably prove, by judicious use of logarithms and congruent triangles, that real life is a lot more like soap opera than most people will admit.

  Molly Ivins

  Real, People, Use

  Molly Ivins (1992). “Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?”, Vintage

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• Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.

  Susan Sontag

  Movie, Art, Ideas

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• Opera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.

  George Brandis

  Years, Australia, Example

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I think it's important to have a blend just as we need to have by the way a mix of different opera companies and different arts companies.

  George Brandis

  Art, Thinking, Important

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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