To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion - and above all, the passion.
I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.
The activity of a singer that sings opera is similar to that of an athlete.
So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.
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.
I told Hugh Hefner, "I have this crazy boyfriend. " And Hef was like, "You're not going anywhere with a crazy boyfriend," and so he put me in a mansion in Bel-Air with an opera singing Chinese maid, and I was driving a Bentley, and a friend of mine came by and was like, "What is going on? Why are you living in this mansion?" And I was like, "Isn't this what happens when people move to LA?
That's nothing. My alarm clock is set for eight.
If I felt that one of my operas did not come off I would certainly say so.
I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.
When I invite a woman to dinner, I expect her to look at my face. That's the price she has to pay.
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.
I maintain that Western popular culture at its best is worthy of respect and should be cherished as much as the operas of Wagner.
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.
I think opera music is very conservative, and Rock and Roll music is conservative as well, and that's why I'm trying to make a bridge between these two elements.
I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.
Lots of opera singers are just boring.
Musicians ought to reclaim some of the power in the houses of production. The opera houses are run either by managers or by stage directors, never by musicians.
Even when I rehearse down in the bowels of the Metropolitan Opera, you can't help but think why The Phantom of the Opera was inspired by what happens in the bowels of the opera house.
Why are homosexuals addicted to soap opera? Because our lives are a vivid situation.
I'm still wondering about the Phantom in the chair, you know at the end of Phantom [of the Opera], so I guess that's my sort of idiocy. I still haven't figured out how they do that.