Opera Quotes

None of us can choose where we shall love...

~ Susan Kay

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

~ Robert Benchley

You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.

~ David Markson

(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?

~ Victor Borge

Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

That´s the problem with planning a late night supper after the opera, not only does the hero or the heroine die singing, but you end up famished after the last notes of the finale.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.

~ Maria Callas

You want to feel that you belong to something higher, to something even beyond this universe, then go to the opera!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.

~ Criss Jami

Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation. Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in to the power of the music of the night.

~ Charles Hart

It's in my genes. My mother was an opera singer. I'm clearly dramatic.

~ Mariah Carey

Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world.

~ Haruki Murakami

He quickly observed, that good sentences and excellent representations of the follies of mankind met with little regard or applause, whilst sounds, without sense, threw every body into raptures:——but 'twas the fashion of the day to be musically mad, and those who were absurd enough to prefer a rational entertainment to a flimsy opera, were poor insipid beings, without taste or enthusiasm.

~ Eliza Parsons

The Phantom is not famous for forgiveness.

~ A.g. Howard

Behind every wall and every mirror and every vent, I hear sounds: breathing, rustling, footsteps, and murmurs. I try to tell myself it’s just mice making their nests behind the barriers, but since when do rodents whisper?

~ A.g. Howard

Without Puccini, there is no opera; without opera, the world is an even drearier place than the evening news would have us think.

~ William Berger

Anna's voice wasn't a beautiful voice - rough edged and sorrowful, a bit used, somehow male and female at once. Yet it had more vibrancy to it than most Danish voices, which were often thin and white and too pretty to trigger a shiver. Anna's voice had the heat of the south; it warmed Einar, as if her throat were red with coals.

~ David Ebershoff

If you would dance, my pretty Count, I'll play the tune on my little guitar..

~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wagner thought Rossini unserious; Rossini thought Wagner 'lacked sun'. Wagner also became the butt of a phrase Rossini had used down the years to describe musicians about whom he had certain reservations - He has some beautiful moments but some bad quarters of an hour!

~ Richard Osborne

Poetry, Shakespeare and opera, are like mumps and should be caught when young. In the unhappy event that there is a postponement to mature years, the results may be devastating.

~ Dimitris Mita

For the love of God, unless you’re prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner.

~ Cheryl Cory

Opera cuts to the chase—as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart.

~ Julian Barnes

In 1857, Bizet departed for Rome and spent three years there. He studied the landscape, the culture, Italian literature and art. Musically he studied the scores of the great masters. At the end of the first year he was asked to submit a religious work as his required composition. As a self-described atheist, Bizet felt uneasy and hypocritical writing a religious piece. Instead, he submitted a comic opera. Publicly, the committee accepted, acknowledging his musical talent. Privately, the committee conveyed their displeasure. Thus, early in his career, Bizet displayed an independent spirit that would be reflected in innovative ideas in his opera compos

~ Georges Bizet

Guard your throats and hide your eyes. He’s not dead, you fools. Legends never die.

~ A.g. Howard

How do you hate someone who pulled you from the brink of death, not once, but twice?

~ A.g. Howard

Ironically, the first time he played it, he experienced his first dream vision with his own ‘flame jumelle’, Rune – and saved her from drowning. Thereafter he decided that must be the magic the instrument held: the ability to bring two souls together when they needed each other the most.

~ A.g. Howard

This can’t be a coincidence, and there’s no longer any doubt in my mind. I am in a horror story.

~ A.g. Howard

He raised his wine for a toast. “To the Exquisite Nightmare.

~ A.g. Howard

Maybe being here won’t be so bad after all… as long as I can avoid the music, the bloodthirsty diva duo, and the phantom’s shadow lurking around every corner.

~ A.g. Howard

Off this fucking predictable soap opera, this will happen now, then that, then that and you say that you are christian and you start watching series of Turkey people which believe in a very different god so far god of hell - Allah...

~ Deyth Banger

I love opera. Si. But I am old. No passion in my life, you know? I work, I walk slowly now through my years...but opera! I see, I hear that passion, Eva. Is like the passion of youth. And I live again. I feel something.

~ J.j. Brown

I don’t want to blend,” Etalon whispered. “I want to belong.

~ A.g. Howard

He’d walked as a ghost in the gloomy bowels of this opera house for so long, darkness had become his brother, which was fitting, since his father was the night, and sunlight their forgotten friend.

~ A.g. Howard

He appears close to my age. The left half of his face stands out beneath the hood: one side of plump lips, one squared angle of a chin. Two coppery-colored eyes look back at me – bright and metallic. The sight makes me do a double take. As far as he is from the car, I shouldn’t be able to make out the color, yet they glimmer in the shadow of his cape, like pennies catching a flashlight’s glare in a deep well.

~ A.g. Howard

The dictatorship is like an aria that never becomes an opera.

~ Emilia Pardo Bazán

... My mother, daroga, my poor, unhappy mother would never... let me kiss her... She used to run away... and throw me my mask!... Nor any other woman... ever, ever!... Ah, you can understand, my happiness was so great, I cried. And fell at her feet, crying... and I kissed her feet... her little feet... crying. You're crying, too, daroga... and she cried also... the angel cried!...

~ Gaston Leroux

I ended my statement to the colored soldiers by saying: Now, I shall be very sorry to hurt you, and you don't know whether or not I will keep my word, but my men can tell you that I always do; whereupon my cow-punchers, hunters, and miners solemnly nodded their heads and commented in chorus, exactly as if in a comic opera, He always does; he always does!

~ Theodore Roosevelt

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

~ H. L. Mencken

I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out.

~ Maurice Sendak

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

~ Bruce Beresford