It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.
It's exotic for me to be given a script that's already written, and be given a pay cheque, and asked to dress up and play, and that's all.
My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.
Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.
I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.
Things have gone beyond my wildest expectations and dreams, and I feel like I've been given so many blessings in my life, between my friendship with the guys in the band, our wonderful audience, being able to play this music, and then my family.
The only thing that is unqualifiedly given is the total pervasive quality; and the objection to calling it "given" is that the word suggests something to which it is given, mind or thought or consciousness or whatever, as well possibly as something that gives.
Certainly, there are huge, multiplatinum bands whose singers command their audience's attention. Sadly, much of the time they have little to say.
my life has been wonderful. I have done what I felt like. I was given courage and I was given adventure and that has carried me along. And then also a sense of humor and a little bit of common sense. It has been a very rich life.
Lots of opera singers are just boring.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
If the human isn’t responsible for their role in the horse human relationship, horses just don’t get along very well. So that’s why I say it’s all about the human meeting the bill to fit the horse in any given situation. But don’t expect the horse to always fit the human.
My first singing role was as Susanna in a school production in a shortened form of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. I loved to sing and I was given lots of encouragement by a wonderful music teacher Mrs Ann Hill and by my parents who suggested I go to drama school.
The most widely criticised singers in the history of opera, Maria Callas and Franco Corelli, happen also to be the best singers. I am honoured for being part of their group.
George Carlin maintained that anything and everything is funny given the right context. This context also includes your own history with a given group. What I can get away with and where I can go is not a problem with my audience because they know me.
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
I'm very happy to sing whatever I'm singing. I've always enjoyed any role I've been given at a certain time. They've all been favourites, they've all been wonderful pieces to play.