Opera Quotes - Page 8

• The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Years, Together, Lasts

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• Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young enough, you don't know that you live in a cheap lousy apartment. A cracked chair is nothing other than a chair. A dandelion growing out of a crack in the sidewalk outside your front door is a garden. You could believe that a song your parent was singing in the evening was the most tragic opera in the world. It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer you.

  Heather O'Neill

  Song, Believe, Garden

  Heather O'Neill (2014). “Lullabies for Little Criminals”, p.134, Hachette UK

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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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• 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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• The most important part of a city is its people. In fact, people for me are like little cities. When you meet someone, it's like you've found a new city to explore. You take a tram, visit the museums and operas and cafes.

  Sarnath Banerjee

  Museums, Cities, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Thinking, World, Fit

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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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• Think 'Game of Thrones.' In the old days, this sort of show might be considered bad writing. It doesn't really seem to be moving toward a crisis or climax, it has no true protagonist, and it's structured less like a TV show or a movie than a soap opera.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Moving, Writing, Thinking

  "Living In The Present Is A Disorder". Interview with R.U. Sirius, www.wired.com. April 8, 2013.

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• I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner.

  Colm Toibin

  Song, Morning, Writing

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• 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.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Inspirational, Thanksgiving, Thankful

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• Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.

  Gaston Leroux

  Soul, Tonight, Gaston

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• In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Real, Hopeless, Aria

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Timequake”, p.111, Random House

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• I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

  J. D. Salinger

  Liars, Memorable, Magazines

  J. D. SALINGER (1951). “THE CATCHER IN THE RYE”

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• My Heart I'm not going to cry all the time nor shall I laugh all the time, I don't prefer one "strain" to another. I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera, often. I want my feet to be bare, I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

  Frank O'Hara

  Running, Heart, Feet

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.231, Univ of California Press

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• You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

  David Markson

  Sex, Reading, Two

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• Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost.

  Gaston Leroux

  Heart, Play, Unhappy

  Gaston Leroux (2016). “THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (Mystery & Horror Series): Gothic Classic Based on True Events at the Paris Opera”, p.201, e-artnow

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• He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.

  Ann Patchett

  Opportunity, Tchaikovsky, True Life

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• What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

  Henry Miller

  Night, Symphony, Years

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

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• For all the days of our lives," we finished and I felt a little like a character in one of my grandma's soap operas.

  Ally Carter

  Grandma, Character, Littles

  Ally Carter (2007). “I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You”, Hyperion

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• In order to get the things I want, it helps me to pretend I’m a figure in a daytime drama, a schemer. Soap opera characters make emphatic pronouncements. They ball up their fists and state their goals out loud. ‘I will destroy Buchanan Enterprises,’ they say. ‘Phoebe Wallingford will pay for what she’s done to our family.’ Walking home with the back half of the twelve-foot ladder, I turned to look in the direction of Hugh’s loft. ‘You will be mine,’ I commanded.

  David Sedaris

  Drama, Home, Character

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

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• Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow's peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on who he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cutting, Talking, Shoes

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• The opera isn't over until the fat lady sings.

  Dick Motta

  Fats

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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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• Once, when we were playing at the Apollo Theater, Holiday was working a block away at the Harlem Opera House. Some of us went over between shows to catch her, and afterwards we went backstage. I did something then, and I still don't know if it was the right thing to do—I asked her for her autograph.

  Ella Fitzgerald

  Block, Holiday, House

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• I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were

  Cab Calloway

  Thinking, Color, Voice

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