Kristine Opolais Quotes

I get even more nervous singing when everyone's fallen silent, but I really try to communicate the meaning of the lyrics, and there's people there listening to that, and if they're moved by it, then I'm moved as well.

I used to stand in front of the mic and cry.

Music has its own emotional embodiment. It carries an emotion with it. When you associate a lyric with the music, it's much easier; but when you're standing there completely dry in front of the camera with no musical background, just a fine-tuned, get-this-emotional-story across, it's a very, very intense kind of focus.

Being in front of all these people staring at you and it helps you to dig down and become more emotional and get lost in it as you're feeding on people's energy.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

We give you this story. It is for the audience to be moved and gut wrenched, not us. It isn't as if we don't go through those real feeling and it isn't as if I don't cry three or four times a night. I usually do.

I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting - a reality of emotion.

I always go in very emotionally when I'm doing music. Sad or happy, I'm always into it. I have a hard time writing for other people, writing with someone else in mind.

I get a little teary on stage sometimes. It can be really emotional when it dawns on you that people are singing along and having fun.

There are times I've been surprised by how emotional I can be on stage.

On stage, it's very naked. There's a reason you shake your knees. You're very vulnerable, cos it's just you, your body is the instrument. But I always had confidence in my voice, if I had the right song, the right words to sing.

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

It's one of the things that weirdly I always used to like about my job: that expressing the emotions of a writer or someone creative and breathing empathy and life into a character people can then identify with, that they'd feel less alone.

I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

I never sing a song more than twice because my fear of waning excitement for a piece is part of my troubles. I so rely on vibe, energy and emotions that the technical part occurs to me last.

Some nights you might go through an entire performance and not feel a thing, and the audience may have a much better time, 'cause if you're enjoying yourself on stage too much, they're having a terrible time because they can't hear you. And if you're a woman your mascara's running.

Eyes which have lost their tears have lost their most beautiful, their most glorious treasure.

I think there's a bit of me in every character. Basically it just depends on what happens with the character.

Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face?

A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds.

I was so nervous every night that I had to really focus and keep myself in that moment so that I would not forget the words. I was really present for every song.

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country.

I suppose that it doesn't matter whether a song is written or sung by a man or a woman. If the sentiment is there, it captures the audience.