Solomia Opera Quotes

If an opera cannot be played by an organ grinder, it's not going to achieve immortality. ~ Thomas Beecham

The curious fact is that biology tells us nothing about desire. And, when you think about it, culture -- novels, movies, opera, and quite a lot of painting -- is about desire, how we manage desire, how we suffer from it, and how it brings us joy when we get things right. A story without desire -- and that means without the insistence of desire -- will be empty, dry, and more or less aimless. That is one reason we read novels, to see how people fall into awkward moral situations and then try to extricate themselves. This is why there is so much anguish in the world: frustrated desire is every bit as miserable as poverty, because desire is no respecter of one's position in life: everyone goes through it. ~ Peter Watson

Soaps taught me the fundamentals of the game. You know, how to show up, hit your mark, how to be on time. That soap opera world is a microcosm of the entertainment culture. ~ Michael Weatherly

Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera. ~ Gaston Leroux

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera. ~ Richard Strauss

A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy. ~ Rabih Alameddine

Daytime soap operas, which I used to adore, have been declining in quality and importance for over a decade, and I gradually stopped monitoring them. ~ Camille Paglia

Warner leans back, just a little. "Tell me what you want," he says desperately. "Tell me what to do," he says, "and I'll do it."

"This is, by far, the craziest shit I have ever seen," Kenji says. "I really never would've believed it. Not in a million years."

"It's like a soap opera." Ian nods. "But with worse acting. ~ Tahereh Mafi

My sister is an opera singer. I grew up going to her recitals. This whole time, I'm like, 'She's the singer. I'm just strumming along and yelling.' ~ Benjamin Booker

You have seven writers in your basement?"
Donald nods, signing, "They like it here. There's a poet, a couple of novelists, an opera librettist, an essay writer ... They don't usually make much trouble. ~ Susan Wiggs

When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging. ~ Placido Domingo

That's opera! I just love it. It just thrills me! And it's very different than theatre, and sometimes it can be frustrating because when you come in the first day of rehearsals obviously you're an opera fan, right? ~ Jason Graae

I love comedy and drama equally and music too. I just sort of follow my nose to whatever seems really exciting at the time. Eventually, I might want to do a rock opera. ~ Jack Black

The sovereign people, legislators, and reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would this precaution be, if there were nothing to gain by it? No one would think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the theatre and the opera. The nation was still aping the kings: like them it wished to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers. Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the nation did not control the list of livings; that was in the hands of its agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to thwart the will of their gracious sovereign. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

My mother became a casting director, and she cast me in a soap opera called 'One Life to Live.' I was, like, 8 years old, playing a kid who had hurt himself on a skateboard. I had, like, three lines. I did the lines, and everybody in the studio applauded - I was immediately hooked after that. I was like, 'This is the life for me.' ~ Christian Slater

I change the language with which I use my voice. In opera, I know I have an orchestra behind me; I have to communicate to people very far from me. ~ Andrea Bocelli

There's not a hell of a lot of difference between bravery and stupidity." - Commander Boaz Aurigae ~ Charles Nall

I only use my sick days for hang-overs and soap opera weddings. ~ Kate O'Brien

I want a shower the size of the Sydney Opera House, because you know damn well I sing in the shower. And I might as well make millions off my cleanliness. ~ Jarod Kintz

I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world. ~ David Sanborn

Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions."

Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. "It's one of our best skills. ~ G.S. Jennsen

–I'll just play the notes inside my skull alone in the dark where they roam around loose. 'Cause playing like a slave, I'd just step myself straight into a hangman's noose."
On Sissieretta Jones, Jess writes: "See, Sissie would know how to let folks into one mask and out through another. She'd even raise a toast to the mask, jokin about whether folk–black and white–really believed that the opera was wearing her as a mask, or if it just tickled them to see her puttin on that white mask of Vivaldi. Was it her voice or someone else's? they'd seem to ask. Well, it was all her. Every note, in whiteface or blackface or in just plain old American, went straight down to her bones. That's what I heard when I truly listened, anyway. She'd pour those opera songs all over her body and then dress herself in the church frock of hymns. She told me one time, that in order to hear her true voice, she'd had to ask herself about her own masks. What kind of mask might I have on? she said. Because let me tell you, most don't even know they're wearing a mask. You've got to know which masks, how many masks you're wearing before you can put it down and see your true self. Those that do, they know just how to slide in and out of it, how to make the world spin inside it and out of it. How to spread their song all over that mask and make it one with the world, no matter how thick or thin the truth in that song might be. ~ Tyehimba Jess

King Kong, Count Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera are just looking for love, like the rest of us. ~ Mason Cooley

Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.

Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time. ~ G.S. Jennsen

In order to get the things I want, it helps me to pretend I'm a figure in a daytime drama, a schemer. Soap opera characters make emphatic pronouncements. They ball up their fists and state their goals out loud. 'I will destroy Buchanan Enterprises,' they say. 'Phoebe Wallingford will pay for what she's done to our family.' Walking home with the back half of the twelve-foot ladder, I turned to look in the direction of Hugh's loft. 'You will be mine,' I commanded. ~ David Sedaris

The captain would ... turn off the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the weather - that blessing to society. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

For all the allure of speciously stress-free suburbs, for all the grinding of city life, cities endure. And when all those diverse energies are harnessed, and those choices, private and public, cohere, and all the bargains made in a million ways every day hold up, then a city flourishes and is the most stimulating center for life, and the most precious artifact, a culture can create. Think of great cities large and small (size, as with any work of art, does not necessarily determine value) and, in addition to nodes of government, commerce, law, hospitals, libraries, and newspapers will come to mind, as will restaurants and theaters and houses of worship and museums and opera houses and galleries and universities. And so will stadia and arenas and parks. In short, once finds not simply commerce but culture, not simply work but leisure, not only negotium but otium, not simply that which ennobles but also that which perfects us. Such has forever been the ultimate purpose of a city, to mirror our higher state, not simply to shelter us from wind and rain. As with leisure, so with the city: It is the setting to make us not the best that Nature can make us, but to manifest the best we, humankind, adding Art to Nature, can make us. ~ A. Bartlett Giamatti

Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world. ~ Haruki Murakami

An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience. ~ Joseph Addison

Solum invoked a sensation akin to lingering déjà vu in the wake of a dream.

It was not Earth. Its city-planet architectural stylings hid the outline of continents that might have otherwise been recognizable and altered the vibrant blue-and-green color palette enough to erase any familiarity in its silhouette.

Yet if you tilted your head just so and let your gaze unfocus a little, you could almost see Earth. Its echo, its memory. ~ G.S. Jennsen