A Quote by Karen Black

As a teenager I studied opera, believe it or not. But I just couldn't catch on to it. — © Karen Black
As a teenager I studied opera, believe it or not. But I just couldn't catch on to it.
I was very young, maybe five. The opera was very... I was attracted to opera to the point that I think it's the reason I started to write music for films. I never studied. There are film and music school that teach you how to write music. I never studied that. But the influence of opera, which is a combination of storyline, visuals, staging, plus music... that was perhaps the best school I could have had. That's what gave me the idea of coming to Hollywood to write music for films.
This is something I haven't told many people, because it's embarrassing. We always used to catch flies with our hands. I was the only one who could catch 'em. One-handed, two-handed. I actually studied flies. I'd watch 'em. How do you catch flies? They fly up. If I can catch that, I can catch anything.
I originally wanted to be an opera singer. I studied classical voice at the University of Washington but soon realised I didn't have the instrument or the discipline. The road for opera singers is more difficult than for actors.
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.
I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.
I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were
I trained with a guy named Tito Gobbi, who was the Marlon Brando of the opera world. Tito Gobbi was the greatest singing baritone in the opera world and I studied in Florence, Firenze, with him. That was my first love, as it was Frank Sinatra's, oddly enough.
I never had any social life, just played the piano and studied, studied, studied.
Both my mother and my grandmother aspired to be opera singers. And they studied it.
I heard opera all day long. From the time I was 9 years old, I was imitating the singers; later I studied opera. But we also got Western television and radio, from the Americans in West Berlin. When I was 11 years old, I turned into a hippie and gave flowers to policemen. And when I was 21 and left Berlin for London, I became a punk.
I've had an extraordinary life as a dancer. You tour the world, you see all the great capitals of the world, the beautiful old opera houses all over Europe - you go everywhere. As a teenager, I would always say, 'I can't believe this is happening to little me,' because it was always a dream to dance.
I studied classical opera, so I was always singing in Italian and German and French.
I have an opera coach who I went to as a teenager, when I was 15 and 16 years old. When I went to college, I forgot about it.
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?
I wasn't cut out to be an opera singer, but it was a nice fantasy for a teenager growing up in Hungary during the Stalinist era.
I studied opera, and when I left conservatory I told myself I would never sing in public again.
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