Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.
The first time I took a plane to dance in front of an audience outside France was when I was in the Paris Opera Ballet School, and we flew to Japan.
The word ‘theatrical’ makes me cringe, because it suggests a performance is staged, put on, rehearsed. And while all this is true for an opera, I believe the act of singing and performing should always be honest, raw, guttural.
Opera is really fun.
Opera became popular in Texas the same way it did in a lot of previously isolated regions of the nation. It started with money. In the case of Texas, it was oil money, and it made a lot of people very rich, very fast.
If I can’t do an opera as well as most people, I won’t do it at all. I don’t want to touch Wagner because I think a lot of people do it a hell of a lot better than I could. I do the operas I think I can do, know something about.
If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.
‘The Phantom of the Opera’ is about love. It’s as simple as that.
I’ve never felt opera was a party I’ve been invited to, and maybe I’ve got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it.
Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.
I’d go over to my grandmother’s house, and she’d be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play.
You can’t tell the story of a 13-year-old boy who knows every lyric to ‘Phantom of the Opera’ without also referencing how much teasing he gets at school.
The very beautiful and very touching thing about opera singers is they are very willing to do whatever you want. Unlike actors, who constantly want to know why they’re doing something, opera singers will sort of follow you into the fires of hell.
I don’t like the word rock opera, but I’m trying to write on that level that’s reserved for plays still, or novels.
A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
I love to play. I love, opera, hiking and museums. The one thing I don’t do is sit. I have a tremendous amount of energy.
Gray means being open-minded. I always look at the world that way; I’m able to hear both sides of an argument. I don’t listen to opera, but I don’t think it’s good or bad; it’s just its own thing. I can completely appreciate it.
We have such a great depth of human history in all of the arts, whether it’s opera or mathematics or painting or classical music or jazz. There’s so many things to study, new books to read, and certainly always ways to transform old ideas and to come up with new ones.
When I was little, I had this old video camera, and I set it up, and I would pretend that I was on comedy shows and soap operas and things like that.
One of the most difficult things in opera is for people to suspend disbelief.
In the Broadway world, I’ve always wanted to play Valjean in ‘Les Mis’, since I’ve already played Gavroche. I’d also like to play the Phantom of the Opera, but I haven’t really thought about any film characters. You’ve got to have a whole lot of training for the Phantom role, vocally.
I’ve been studying voice for quite a while, especially opera, for at least seven or eight years.
A practical way to travel between the stars is a must-have for space opera, and a sine qua non for our frequently vaunted future as a galactic society.
‘The Stars are Legion’ is part space opera, part thriller, about two warring families battling it out for control over a legion of organic starships.
I listen to all kinds of music myself; it can range from practically anything: Opera, Jazz, to Blues, good Pop, just about anything.
My family were symphonic musicians and in the opera. Also, it was my era, the love of radio. We used to listen to the radio at night, close our eyes and see movies far more beautiful than you can photograph.
‘Macbeth’ is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie – such as some of the special effects and bits of film – to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.
In my teens, I saw a terrible production of ‘Die Walkuere.’ To a person of 15, it was just awful, and it put me off for many years. Eventually I became an opera-goer, if not an opera buff.
In the modern operas that ‘Miss Saigon’ and ‘Les Miz’ are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.
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.
I was on the soap opera ‘Days of our Lives.’
One of the problems with musicals and opera is you can’t ever hear all the words.
In opera, there is always too much singing.
My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.
I’d really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.
Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.
The idea is not to have one great singer surrounded by a bunch of nit wits. When the others are good, too, that’s when you get something happening in opera.
The cynical part of the answer is that I expect to see a good deal more space opera, set far enough in the future as to be disconnected from contemporary issues.
The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm’s highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.
I started performing opera when I was 10 years old. I didn’t perform as Zola Jesus until I was probably 18.
I grew up with singers. My father’s mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can’t remember a time there wasn’t music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters – George Gershwin, Cole Porter – and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
Anyone who wants to promote a car or a football tournament turns to opera. There’s a much greater public connection than the image of plush corporate boxes would suggest.
‘The Thing from Another World’ was the first movie that really scared me. But the one that made me want to make movies was ‘The Tales of Hoffman.’ That’s my favorite film of all time. It’s a fantasy film. It’s an opera. I never get tired of it.
I know that my passion is for opera, but sometimes I like also to sing songs, because there are many beautiful melodies.
Both my mother and my grandmother aspired to be opera singers. And they studied it.
In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that’s not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.
‘Next To Normal’ is rock music. It’s a rock opera. That, definitely, has a place in popular music.
I wish there was more for minorities than sitcoms. I’d like to see a soap opera about blacks. People don’t live in isolation anymore.
In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn’t sing. It’s an intellectual play.
The activity of a singer that sings opera is similar to that of an athlete.
In my shows, I always try to incorporate music because it’s the most natural way to set a tone. So if I want to do a show about depression, I use the opera. If I want to do a show about greed, I use spoken word. If I want to do a show about the injustice that’s taking place in the world, I might play Sam Cooke.
There was always dance in opera until people forgot to keep it going.
Opera is given so little attention in the national press.
Increasingly, I find myself drawn to classic forms – to Euripides, Shakespeare and grand opera.
In the case of ‘The Housewives,’ I call the ‘Housewives’ sociology of the rich. I think it’s just fun to watch. It’s guilt-free gossiping that you can have. It’s like the modern-day soap opera, in my mind.
Every time I go to a new place, more likely than not, I end up seeing an opera there. It’s ended up being a part of travel.
For a while, I couldn’t decide whether or not I should pursue singing in the opera or acting. And I’m glad that I chose the latter because I wasn’t a very good singer.
I think what we’ve been able to do with ‘Longmire’ is balance this procedural with a bit of a soap opera, and it’s a character study of this character, Walt Longmire, and the people around him.
I don’t find much influence in opera. It was such a different part of me.
