Opera Quotes - Page 7

• 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.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Tickets, Fans, Dollars

  "Dancer-actor Mikhail Baryshnikov". "The Tavis Smiley show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. April 10, 2012.

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• 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?

  Oscar Wilde

  Morning, Work, Night

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.594, Wordsworth Editions

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• My parents used to park us kids at the public library in downtown Honolulu every Saturday. They'd leave us there at 8 A.M. and pick us up at 4 P.M. - so between those hours, you'd better find something to do! I sat upstairs in the picture room and went through opera, ballet, and theater books. I loved the photographs of people wearing elaborate makeup and costumes - they really pulled at me inside. I was in that library every week for years, until I was about 13. I had a rich interior life, because I didn't have much of a social life.

  Bette Midler

  Book, Kids, Makeup

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• A review of his work: His music soon spread throughout Europe, and he was invited to America were he performed the Piano Concerto. He would have wished that he would be remembered as an opera composer, but it was to be his orchestral extravaganzas, mainly the trilogy of Roman pictures that has made his name famous.

  Ottorino Respighi

  Work, Europe, Names

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• For me, the most enjoyable type of singing is opera. It allows you to move, to wear a costume ... to do something with your body. When singing in concert you have to stand up in front of the audience, next to the conductor, which is less natural.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Moving, Singing, Body

  "Andrea Bocelli: 'Only preparation helps my stagefright'" by Andrea Bocelli, www.theguardian.com. May 10, 2009.

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• As a horror movie fan, I was very obsessed with horror films. Still am. I love the genre. For me, horror films are opera, and they are... instead of consumption killing off the young lovers, it's Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. It is when the stakes are at their absolute largest in a story: whether somebody is going to live or die. In a way, it's just holding up a mirror to life.

  Bryan Fuller

  Mirrors, Young Love, Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!

  Dave Brubeck

  Thinking, Names, Dukes

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• Growing up female in America. What a liability! You grew up with your ears full of cosmetic ads, love songs, advice columns, whoreoscopes, Hollywood gossip, and moral dilemmas on the level of TV soap operas. What litanies the advertisers of the good life chanted at you! What curious catechisms!

  Erica Jong

  Love, Song, Good Life

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

  Northrop Frye

  Believe, People, Suffering

  Northrop Frye (2015). “Anatomy of Criticism”, p.76, Princeton University Press

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• Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.

  C. Wright Mills

  Technology, Media, Fiction

  C. Wright Mills (2002). “White Collar: The American Middle Classes”, p.333, Oxford University Press

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• The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Emotional, Average, Games

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• More people are listening to opera, and I'm happy - everybody must be given that opportunity.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Opportunity, People, Listening

  "'My hands are frozen and my heart races': Andrea Bocelli says crippling stage fright is like an incurable disease" by Tom Bryant, www.mirror.co.uk. February 08, 2013.

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• 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

  Couple, Adventure, Europe

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• An opera singer is like an athlete before a match. An athlete cannot overdo anything. In order to perform at the highest possible level, you need to refrain from activities so as to be able to express this power.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Athlete, Order, Levels

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• It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?

  David Byrne

  Attitude, Thinking, Symphony

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• To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion - and above all, the passion.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Passion, Two, Voice

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• The activity of a singer that sings opera is similar to that of an athlete.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Athlete, Singers, Activity

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• Writers and books are cheap dates, especially when you compare the cost of a book with a ticket to the opera - or an NHL game.

  Margaret Atwood

  Book, Nhl, Games

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• Marriage, like spinach and opera, was something I had never thought I would like.

  Jasper Fforde

  Spinach

  Jasper Fforde (2003). “Lost in a Good Book”, Viking Adult

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• Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.

  Joan Baez

  Ipods, Littles, Turns

  "How Sweet The Sound: An Interview With Joan Baez". Interview with Mike Ragogna, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• 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.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Mother, Ballet, Remember

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• You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation.

  Irvin S. Cobb

  Sarcastic, Operations, Ifs

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• I know that my passion is for opera, but sometimes I like also to sing songs, because there are many beautiful melodies.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Beautiful, Song, Passion

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• I never pictured myself as a telenovela galan - never imagined Id be in a soap opera.

  Jencarlos Canela

  Soap, Soap Operas

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• I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.

  John Adams

  Growing Up, Thinking, Awful

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