The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.
It is not always a matter of wild ovations and legendary performances. Sometimes you are just happy to get through an opera without trouble.
Hey you! I told you to slow that nag down! Because of you, I almost heard the opera!
There's an opera out on the turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley.
I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.
I never liked opera growing up. I always liked chamber music or solo music even more than orchestral music.
The more opera is dead, the more it flourishes.
A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.
Excepting a religious ceremonial, there is no occasion where greater dignity of manner is required of ladies and gentlemen both, than in occupying a box at the opera. For a gentleman especially no other etiquette is so exacting.
Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.
I got last-minute rush seats to Baz Luhrmann's 'Boheme,' and my favorite singer, Ekaterina Solovyeva, was playing Mimi that day. My face got burned off when she sang the aria 'Donde Lieta Usci. ' The woman was technically sobbing and singing opera at the same time. I don't know how you do that.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read.
I couldn't be more thankful to get my start on a soap opera. It was the hardest job I ever had. Got to practice in front of the camera, like, every day.
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.
You couldn't tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation.
Later, I even appeared in a Rock Opera with Richard Gere.
If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality.
I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.
Everyone has their own taste: some like theatre, some don't, some like opera, some don't, some like pantomimes, and some don't.