Tom Waits Quotes

Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.

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.

I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

I think my great-grandpa was an opera singer or something.

As a kid, I dreamed about being onstage.

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet.

When I was 11 years old, I wanted to sing Tosca.

Growing up, my dad took me to the opera.

I did it once in high school - I was Sandy in Grease - and I decided then that I would never do it again. I've felt that way for years, and that's no bullshit.

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

I never liked opera growing up. I always liked chamber music or solo music even more than orchestral music.

Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.

The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.

I've never been to the opera; I've only seen opera on DVD.

For me, few things are more compelling than watching a great opera.

I sing what I sing. And that's recitals and orchestra concerts. To appease - no, that's not the right word - let's say to satisfy - any opera urgings that my public has, I'll put in an aria.

Let's be clear: I love singing at the Met.

I was a little girl who grew up idolizing musical-theatre stars.

Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.

I guess there's something that's appealing to me about people that are aspirational-slash-deluded.

My father's an opera nut, and my stepmother used to work at the Metropolitan Opera, so I had a lot of opera immersion. I like the grandness and pretention of it.

I had always wanted to pursue music. It was always a dream, but it was always a dream in the sense of, when you're young, 'I want to be president' or 'I want to be an astronaut and fly to Mars.' That's what it was to me.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to be Steven Tyler. It was really strange, but as a little girl you think anything is possible, and it is. I never even thought about being an actress.

From the time I was 2, I told my mom I was going to be a singer. And she'd say, 'Sure, honey, and tomorrow you'll want to be a dancer.'