Top 1200 Opera Singers Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

I don't think I am even the best I can be. I like to listen to other singers and learn from them, but I'm always working on myself, trying to improve, trying to be very tough with myself.

And whether or not you're interested in opera or classical music or folk music or the theatre, I think that for a nation's health and well-being it's very important that the arts scene is supported.

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.

I'm a mad fan of American guitarist Ry Cooder and he made a record using Mexican musicians, but with American soul singers doing the backing. It opened my eyes to the fact that the Mexicans played very differently.

That's the extraordinary thing about opera: it has the power to elicit a physical reaction. I don't know if I'd have been any good or not, but I do know that I was never committed enough to find out.

I think Phil Collins is one of the most underrated musicians, singers, performers - he is absolutely amazing, I think, and I think he's probably got a bit of a rough ride occasionally because he became so mainstream and so popular.

I actually prefer female voices to listen to, mostly, but among the male singers whose voices I like are Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, that sort of voice. Contemporary crooners rather than rockers.

I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.

You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

I was just obsessed with soul singers who had these big powerful voices. I used to listen to Aretha, Whitney, Mariah and try and imitate them, note for note and riff for riff.

I went on tour with Ricky Skaggs and his wife, Sharon White, and the White Family in 2015. It was fantastic. They're all the greatest singers of that country stuff, traditional country up into bluegrass.

Whether you're an opera singer, a legislator or customer service operator, there is a way that we can find common ground with our audience - be they young or old, Democrats or Republicans, rich or poor, religious or secular.

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.

Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.

I was lucky enough to first meet Elvis at his house in Bel Air and he used to invite different artists, singers and musicians, to come and jam with him at his house.

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of the grand passion than of a grand opera.

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

As a woman, you listen to more female singers, like guys listen to more rock bands. So in that way, they influence you because you're trying to create an identity; you look to others to model.

I was emotionally and physically punched in the stomach. This is not a place where you go and deliver the lines and then you come back. It's kind of a life-changing experience. But it can't get better than this for any actor - this is like an opera.

A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.

Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.

If you're a young artist, wondering what to call yourself, consider 'multimedia artist.' It's so vague. Then, no one can say, 'Hey, how come you're a jazz person, and you're making a pop opera?

I was singing when I was five years old. My sister and I both had the talent from mom and dad, and she was in opera and I was into pop and uh, rhythm and blues, anything, I was about a four octave singer.

Every life of a character is within a context. If I write detached from a social and political background, my story looks like a soap opera where everybody is indoors, not working and living off their emotions.

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.

I still listen to older music a lot more than new singers. I listen to whatever's on the radio, but when I want to listen to something that moves me I put on a Stevie Wonder record.

There's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies.

In a way, being an opera singer is like being a very romantic sixteen-year-old who falls in love with great passion and conviction every month.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a 'grand passion' than of a grand opera.

In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

I love to sing. I don't think it's strange for singers to act, or painters to sculpt. I don't want to ever feel like I'm cornered into one expression of creativity because I'm successful at making films or being an actor. I guess it's best to not paint yourself into that corner.

I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.

We would never get away from it. ... It's bad enough as it is, but with the wireless telephone one could be called up at the opera, in church, in our beds. Where could one be free from interruption?

In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.

What's interesting about Vampire Weekend, everyone in the band, except for me, had a band in high school in which they were the lead singers. And I'm the one who never had that experience.

I said,'Instead of going in the direction that a lot of the women singers are going in [revealing], I'll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet...I will have mystique.

I come from probably many generations of singers because my grandmother had a really incredible voice and sang in church. And my mother had a gorgeous voice and was always singing around the house.

To have the sound I have, to pretty much close out a festival, it's something I didn't see much of in school. It was always pop singers and rappers. It's so cool to see that space for R&B getting bigger.

We got to see Sondheim shows, 'Phantom of the Opera,' 'Cats' and all sorts of stuff. When you're 10 or 11 years old, it's just magnificent. The story-telling, the music - it lifts you out of your seat.

In the case of 'The Housewives,' I call the 'Housewives' sociology of the rich. I think it's just fun to watch. It's guilt-free gossiping that you can have. It's like the modern-day soap opera, in my mind.

I started performing with the Boston Children's Opera when I was 5, and I stayed working with that group until I was about 12 or 13, so that was a huge part of my life. It was, weirdly, an extremely professional environment geared towards kids.

My grandad was an opera singer, my uncle a jazz musician; I was a boy soprano in the church choir. But the first performance with Deep Purple was something I'll never forget. All elements were working brilliantly.

Rock pools, so-named because they have been hammered out of rocks at the ocean's edge, are one of Sydney's defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known.

I hate the opera. I think I must have a tin ear. No matter how hard I concentrate it still sounds like a bunch of Italian chefs screaming risotto recipes at each other.

I was worried that all the corners of the earth had been explored, all the great battles fought. The famous people on TV were athletes and actresses and singers. What did they stand for? I wondered: Had the time for heroes passed?

Those old Appalachian singers use a falsetto sometimes. They can change their voices to sound high or low or really scratchy. When you're singing, usually you're trying to express some kind of pain or joy. I think that voice allows me to do a lot more of that.

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.

I'm a lover of all sorts of music, which makes me a chameleon when it comes to performing anything, whether it's opera or whatever. As long as it's good and it feels good, I'm going to cling to it.

Because, in opera, I have to sing for people that are very far from me, instead of, when I sing a song, I try to imagine to sing like in an ear of a child.

It is time of individualities now. Good performing skills are not enough now, you may sing better or worse - tons of good singers are waiting outside - it doesn't matter. You have to be different!

I think Rihanna is very interesting. But those people, the singers especially, know how to handle themselves because they're in the limelight. That's why it has grown into something where the model has stepped back - and I don't know if it's coming forward again.

I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.

One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name.

Singers actually used to begin singing at a much younger age than they do now. I would say for me, I started late. But it's not unusual. I discovered I had a voice. I wanted to be a pianist when I was seven, and circumstances didn't allow that I studied it.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

Gordon Brown is a character from a tragic opera, twisted by ambition and a Presbyterian sense of fateful destiny. He has waited 13 years, mostly in Tony Blair's shadow, for this poisoned chalice and has a pessimist's luck.

I just figured, 'I don't want to go to university anymore,' so I went to Stockholm. I went into this teaching school and after one year I got a part in a soap opera in Stockholm. It's called 'Rederiet.'

Actors are given songs that suit their voice and skill. At the same time, those songs which have a complicated tune and need expertise to perform should be given to trained singers.