Opera Performance Quotes

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.

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.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - it's beyond belief.

We do not seem to be finding tomorrow's Toscas.

When the fat lady comes out to sing, we don't know how she feels that day. We don't know if she's suffering from a cold or is mourning a death or falling in love. We don't know. But so all of that chance is the performance.

After 'Spelling Bee,' I started landing more jobs... I got 'Candide' at New York City Opera.

I never breathe through the nose, not when I'm singing. In the opera, you don't have so much time. That's fine at the beginning of an opera or after somebody else has been doing an aria, and you want to get a good fresh start.

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.

It was in Cardiff, and the cast was 60 per cent Welsh-speaking. It's the first time I've walked into a rehearsal room speaking my mother tongue, which in itself was a breath of fresh clean air from the Welsh mountains. Singing Hans Sachs is always a milestone, but I was happy to be part of such an achievement, not personally but as a company.

I dislike those people that see an opera and say "Oh, they can't act it. They just sing. It's boring." Lean back and just listen to the voices.

I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.

I sing 'Nessun Dorma' when I warm up backstage.

I'm by no means an opera buff.

'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.

The roughest make-up I ever wore was for 'Phantom of the Opera' because the phantom's face was all disfigured, and he's trying to pass in public so he can attend his beloved opera. That was make-up over make-up.

One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name.

Before Bianca?? I don't remember that far back! That would've been in my teens. I was working in local theater and opera, doing costumes, hair and makeup.

My first job was when I was eight. I did this opera, which was a Robert Wilson/Philip Glass opera, called 'White Raven.' That was a very confusing and trippy creation tale, and I was a kid who brought up the sun and rotated the earth. It was very empowering.

True expression is hard when performing opera. The problem is that opera relies on the dramatic context of the piece. It can be interpreted and represented, but there are guidelines; there is a vocabulary within the pieces that you must know objectively and reflect.

The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this sweet storm of song.

I've been studying voice for quite a while, especially opera, for at least seven or eight years.

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

I find the opera part in 'The Greatest Show on Earth' challenging.

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto.

I love it when an aria fits a singer as perfectly as a suit of well-tailored clothes.