Bed is the poor man's opera.
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The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.
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Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
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No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
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At the opera in Milan with my daughter and me, Needleman leaned out of his box and fell into the orchestra pit. Too proud to admit it was a mistake, he attended the opera every night for a month and repeated it each time.
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My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments. And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments, ... And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.
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If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
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It's funny, to me, the way people refer to childbirth as a miraculous event. A miracle is something that defies nature. Only, childbirth has got to be the most natural thing in the world. Top three anyway. But, on the other hand, when you think about it, there's really no other word that fits. Sperm. Egg. A coincidental meshing of genetic information that will grow something that could write an opera or cook up some Napalm. It blows my mind.
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The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
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My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mental imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand... But as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.
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Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it, and that a very severe one.
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Do it big or stay in bed.
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To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.
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I love Italian opera -- it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate.
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The opera isn't over till the fat lady sings.
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A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.
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In how many lives does love really play a dominant part The average taxpayer is no more capable of the grand passion than of a grand opera.
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When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance.
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'Gone With The Wind' is one of the all-time greats. Read Margaret Mitchell's book and watch the film again; it's a soap opera in all its glory. It is superb and memorable.
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If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window.
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An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.
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I never was an opera fan -- about twenty-five musically supreme masterpieces in this curious medium apart.
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Opera once was an important social instrument -- especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.
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Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.
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I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful. One almost expects the people to sing instead of speaking. It is all like an opera.
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I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is an language I do not understand.
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You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation.
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Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.
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