Operatic Singing Quotes

I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.

We of the soft-crooning radio type of singer are giving the people what they want. The American public as a whole does not care for full-throated operatic singing. And why should it? Down through the ages, it has been the simple song which has lived and continues to touch the heart of humanity. And so it is with singing.

When you do a 'messa di voce,' that means you start soft, you crescendo into loud - and then you go back to soft again. Some people call it circus tricks, but in bel canto, it's really written into the music.

The Armstrong record that I personally like the most, is a recording of a song by Harold Arlen called, "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues" . Most of Armstrong's solos tended to stick pretty close to the melody. But for some reason, it's like he let go of the tether and suddenly he's playing this beautiful high, almost abstract line that's floating above the beat. I compare it to the way that a 19th century operatic tenor might have sang an Aria because he's just completely let loose of the background and he's making this magic sort of flying above the staff.

I do not have voice for Russian music; I cannot be cute little peasant like in operas of Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov. I am now never in Russia; I am Austrian citizen. But definitely I am Latin!

The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini 's Turandot or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva.

In the beginning of my career, I didn't have any female singer in metal to ask for advice, nor have I ever had a role model or a metal singer that could inspire me, because the way I sang was operatic.

You have to have great passion, because to sing operatic music requires lots of work. I study for at least two hours every day. The voice is like an instrument and requires constant exercise.

I'd love to have the time to learn to sing opera properly rather than bellowing half-formed fragments of melody in exuberant moments.

Around age 38, there was a slight change to my voice, and very much in the center. That made it possible to start thinking about certain roles: Guillaume Tell, Romeo, Edgardo. These roles require a fuller center.

I was halfway through writing a gothic, country house mystery when, out of the blue, I received an email inviting me to audition for the ITV show, 'Popstar To Operastar.'

I felt that I really couldn't be creative with opera. You're supposed to sound this way here. You're supposed to crescendo here. You're supposed to do that. I had no sense of identity while singing that kind of music.

I never pursued voice hard enough. I've done musicals here and there, but I was never dedicated to really being one of these fantastic, operatic kind of singers that you have to be in some of these musicals.

I started classical and operatic lessons when I was 8 and become an operatic singer and went to competition. I write my own music. A lot of the songs, growing up, I was into writing dark stories and poems, and one day I started putting melodies to them.

Usually, in musical theater, if you sing operatically or if you sing in a legit style, you're the heart of the show. You maybe get to be moving and do dramatic stuff, but it's very rare to be that funny.

Opera is an extremely disciplined art form, and every excess a singer indulges in has a direct effect on the voice.