Singing Opera Quotes

When I do operas, I'm not really singing very classically. I have a classical background as far as being a pianist and an oboist, but my voice isn't really classical in the operatic sense. But I certainly have a classical sensibility, so I'm comfortable being in that world. ~ Jason Graae

He also loved the city itself. Coming to and leaving Cousin Joe's, he would gorge himself on hot dogs and cafeteria pie, price cigarette lighters and snap-brim hats in store windows, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers. There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bums, sad and menacing, and ladies in piped jackets with dogs in their handbags. Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath him. He heard men swearing and singing opera. On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrome headlights of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies' shoes, the badges of policemen, the handles of pushcart lunch-wagons, the bulldog ornaments on the hoods of irate moving vans. This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis. Its skies and rooftops were alive with men in capes and costumes, on the lookout for wrongdoers, saboteurs, and Communists. Tommy ~ Michael Chabon

Wherever you walk, stand or sit, do it with self-confidence and be firmly convinced: I am a singer! Being tentative is one of the deadly theatre sins. ~ Marita Knobel

Chris Salamone donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to education and leadership development as Chairman of the LeadAmerica Foundation. With his passion in studying and singing opera, he is trained in the martial arts of Jyu Ryu and Miyama Ryu Combat Jujitsu. ~ Chris Salamone

People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe, met my dad, fell in love, and then moved back to Rome, where I was raised, between Rome and Hamburg. ~ Giancarlo Esposito

That was my way, and I also use the music after five years, I started hearing opera, opera, it was very good instrument to keep the spirit very strong because you feel like you are yourself singing opera, and I used to hear a lot of opera, they send me tapes. ~ Mordechai Vanunu

I always wanted to be a comedian. I loved comedy since I was a little kid, and while I was at university I started doing stand up shows. Once I realized that I was good at it I quit college and left although I had six months left. I went to England. I could have done the last six months but I realized that I was better at standup comedy than I was at singing opera. ~ Jim Jefferies

Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping,
Now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for - I awake, 150
And already a thousand singers - a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me,
Never to die.

O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself - projecting me;
O solitary me, listening - nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you; 155
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous'd - the fire, the sweet hell within, 160
The unknown want, the destiny of me. ~ Walt Whitman

Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he comes in the clouds of heaven. ~ John Wesley

God gave me a gift of singing and playing the piano, and when I do it, it's exciting, of course. But it's more than that. It's truly the way God created me to release my soul and my spirit, to really worship him ... I'm made to create music. ~ Amy Williams

I've always been singing, and acting was just something that happened. ~ Thalia

The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor. ~ Terry Pratchett

I still have my eyes on the prize: I want to be that old lady onstage shaking her hips and singing her greatest hits. ~ Christina Aguilera

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it. ~ Noel Coward

The sun is shining and the bird are singing what more could you ask for in a day! ~ Heather Mills

The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile. ~ Rick Riordan

I've taken singing lessons since I was young, just to work on technique. ~ Skylar Laine

The swan in the pool is singing, And up and down doth he steer, And, singing gently ever, Dips under the water clear. ~ Heinrich Heine

I sprinted down the alley, not fast enough to avoid the cold water rolling down my back, with a childlike shriek. I caught his arm by the elbow, and we ran together, through the singing crowd, past swaying elders, men and women dancing too close, irritable off-planet visitors trying to cover up their wares in the market. We splashed through bright blue puddles, soaking our clothes. And we were both, for once, laughing. ~ Veronica Roth

Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

Reaching out, Andrew crooked his little finger with mine. "If I live, I'll find a way to let you know, Drew," he promised. "I owe you that much--and a whole lot more."
After a little silence, Andrew's face brightened. "You don't suppose you could stay, do you? Just think of the fun we'd have playing tricks on Edward and Mrs. Armiger." He laughed at his own thoughts. "Why, we'd make their heads spin, Drew. They wouldn't know one of us from the other."
For a moment, it seemed possible. My mother and father were away, they wouldn't miss me. As for Aunt Blythe--well, we'd think of some way to let her know I was all right. We were bouncing on the bed, singing "Yip-I-Addy-I-Ay," when the door opened and Mama appeared. It was Andrew she looked at, not me.
"Why are you still awake?" she asked. "I told you to go to sleep."
As Mama approached the bed, Andrew flung his arms around her. "You can see me, Mama," he cried. "Oh, thank the Lord! It's me, your own true son, back again for keeps."
She stared at him, perplexed. "What nonsense is this? Of course I can see you. Of course it's you. Who else would it be, you silly goose?"
I slid off the bed and ran to her side. "Me," I shouted, "it could be me."
When Mama didn't even blink, I tugged at her nightgown. "Look at me," I begged. "I'm here too, we both are. Andrew and me. Can't you see us both?" I hugged her, but all she did was shiver.
"No wonder this room is so drafty," she murmured. "The attic do ~ Mary Downing Hahn

Only a single bird

is singing.

The air is cloning it.

We hear through mirrors. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

I sing what I sing. And that's recitals and orchestra concerts. To appease - no, that's not the right word - let's say to satisfy - any opera urgings that my public has, I'll put in an aria. ~ Kathleen Battle

So the shortest day came, and the year died. ~ Susan Cooper

I love singing. I've never felt I've had a great voice but I feel I've gotten better. It's funny. I can hear my voice aging and getting stronger. I've relaxed about my singing so I'm hearing it the way I like it. ~ Joel Plaskett

For the rest of my life, the one song that people will remember
regardless
is "Conga" ... I never get tired of singing it. It never gets old for me. ~ Gloria Estefan

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough ... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them. ~ Henry David Thoreau

My angel-boy is close now, as in five-feet-away close. There's no way I'm going to burst into song in front of him. But then the contrary part of me says, you're going to let a boy keep you from singing out loud? Sing, sister! Sing!
So I do, and my angel-boy turns his head. ~ Lauren Myracle

I tried to connect my singing voice to my guitar an' my guitar to my singing voice. Like the two was talking to one another. ~ B.B. King

There's beauty in the silver singing river There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty That I remember in my true love's eyes ~ Bob Dylan

Indian actors, because of the format of our stories, need to be good actors, and be able to perform emotional sequences, do a bit of comedy, dance and singing, action, because all of this forms just one film. In many ways I'd say there are greater demands on Indian actors than there are on Hollywood. ~ Amitabh Bachchan

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to 'get' any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera. ~ Brian Eno

Sometimes we're on a collision course, and we just don't know it. Whether it's by accident or by design, there's not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she'd stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who'd stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn't been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot.

When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the whil ~ Eric Roth

My mum was a big fan of E.L.O. and Elvis Costello. She used to play that, consistently, all the time when we were kids. And my dad, he would claim to be a singer ... You know, he loves singing, and he used to sing a lot when he was a kid and at parties and stuff like that. So I come from a very party-musical family. ~ James Vincent McMorrow

The silence was suddenly too much. He hit the CD button on the car's radio. Brian Jones's sitar riff opened for Charlie Watts tribal-like drumbeat thundering from the speakers. Keith Richards' jangly guitar joined in, followed by Mick singing about seeing a red door that he wanted to paint black. ~ Glenn Rolfe

The music game is more than just my love for singing, its a sport for me. ~ Keshia Chante

Live audiences love me because I'm singing and actually am able to f**k with people live over the mic. ~ Willam Belli

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money. ~ Rufus Wainwright

O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Children are turning themselves into monsters and, quite frankly, it is your fault. You initiated the creation of this technology, then you allowed it to slip through your fingers."

Miriam's jaw tightened. "I disagree, but now is the least optimal time imaginable for assigning blame. People are dying, and I will not stand around debating semantics with you while they are. ~ G.S. Jennsen

I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. ~ Ralph Ellison

My grandmother's life had been one long opera. There had been drama, heroes, villains, improbable twists, all that. But most of all there had been love, great big waves of it, crashing ceaselessly against the rocks of life, bearing us all back to grace. ~ Alex George

If I'm going to go to the opera, I want to see the costumes and the melodrama. ~ Jaime Winstone

I think it's the responsibility of a major opera house not only to cultivate debate and get people thinking, but also to be interfaced with things that challenge them. To challenge its audience and not just deliver things that they know, even though some of those things are wonderful. ~ Wayne McGregor

It's one thing having a great song, but I think for me if you take it to the next level ... say you had a guitar and a vocal, and the song was amazing but the vocalist wasn't that great and it just was a guitar and vocal acoustic track, switching that to something like an amazing voice singing the exact same song with the instrumentation being really nice and lush or unique in some way and interesting and diverse ... I think it's all about the instrumentation and textures in the sound. ~ Flume

Presently I somehow found myself singing. The words were mere nonsense- irresponsible babble ... Humanity would have rejected it with scorn. Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognized and accepted it without a flicker of dissent. ~ Kenneth Grahame

All my life I have hated and despised alto! ... From a boy it has affected me very strangely. That's why I hate Sunday. People will sing alto on Sunday that would never dream of singing it any other time. ~ Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon