In the opera we call love, the libretto is almost nothing.
Opera is the ultimate art form. It has singing and music and drama and dance and emotion and story.
I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.
You would be amazed at the pompadour that I was rocking in the first job I had on the soap opera called 'Loving,' my first contract job.
Because, in opera, I have to sing for people that are very far from me, instead of, when I sing a song, I try to imagine to sing like in an ear of a child.
Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.
The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself
The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.
There's an opera out on the turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley.
The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.
Do you think Duke Ellington didn't listen to Debussy? Louis Armstrong loved opera, did you know that? Name me a jazz pianist who wasn't influenced by European music!
Soap operas got nothing on my family history.
Tulsa has world-class opera and Starbucks, and a religious conservatism that rules public life.
For better or worse, I've always been curious musically. Whether it's opera or Judy Garland or pop, I've deliberately sought those things out. I've never wanted to do the same things over and over. Some think I've accomplished what I set out to do, and others consider me a dilettante.
Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.
There was always dance in opera until people forgot to keep it going.
I'd like to direct more operas.
The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.