A Quote by Kathleen Battle

When I do concerts and recitals, the two most common requests are spirituals and opera.

Kathleen Battle

Quote Topics

Common Concerts Most Opera Recitals Requests Two

Quote Author

Kathleen Battle
American - Actress
Born: August 13, 1948

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

When I am on the opera stage, I am playing someone else. In recitals, I even have the chance to talk to the audience, which is something you don't get to do in opera.

Sondra Radvanovsky

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

Renee Fleming

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

In the early years, I was able to accommodate most of the requests and favors that came my way, but as the requests multiplied, I had to make tough choices because the numbers were more than I could handle.

LaVell Edwards

I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.

Otis Rush

Americans, they have an incredible operatic tradition: the Metropolitan Opera House is - if not the most prestigious - one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world for over 100 years.

Jose Carreras

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.

Robert Davi

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera." So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto." Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.

Terry Teachout

As a child, I was always making sound; it was a compulsion. I loved to scream and yell and sing; it freed me from all the thoughts in my head. I begged for opera lessons because opera singing is the most formidable, most emotional way to use your voice.

Zola Jesus

The Trump campaign generally does not respond at all to my requests for information - either requests for broader data on Trump's charitable giving or narrow requests for information about specific subjects, like the $20,000 portrait of himself that Trump seems to have purchased with money from his charity.

David Fahrenthold

The two most potent post-war orthodoxies--socialist politics and modernist art--have at least one feature in common: they are bothforms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man.

Roger Scruton

Do you know most of the Jewish songs have the same trend of sadness as Negro spirituals?

Mahalia Jackson

Opera contains music that reflects a culture of poetry and aesthetic. Spirituals are no different. What separates a spiritual for me is that I also happen to love Jesus. When I'm approaching these songs, I'm not approaching them like Mozart. I see my faith and the struggle of my ancestors and of a people seeking freedom beside what these songs are going to be in terms of their arrangement and delivery.