When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place.
Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul.
I studied opera, and when I left conservatory I told myself I would never sing in public again.
(Referring to the piano's natural shape) Isn't it a shame when those big fat opera singers lean against the pianos and bend them?
The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays. . . is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.
The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself
Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance.
What's difficult to understand about German opera? It's always the same. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl gets devoured by horrible winged creature with claws.
It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.
Music has always played a big part in my life and, believe it or not, in my soap opera career.
I'd like to direct more operas.
Daytime soap operas, which I used to adore, have been declining in quality and importance for over a decade, and I gradually stopped monitoring them.
I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.
Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.
I became a set designer for opera.
'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.
I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.
Dare to be honest and fear no labor. . . . Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.