OPERA QUOTES

quotations about opera

Opera quote

The more opera is dead, the more it flourishes.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Opera's Second Death

Tags: Slavoj Zizek


Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone.

ANONYMOUS

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No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

W. H. AUDEN

Time Magazine, December 29, 1961

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Opera is always regarded as the most expensive of the performing arts. It often absorbs the lion's share of government subsidy to them, though it is the least widely attended.

RUTH TOWSE

A Handbook of Cultural Economics


The opera isn't over till the fat lady sings.

ANONYMOUS

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Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

H. L. MENCKEN

attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

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In certain ways sleep is useful. It is an excellent way of listening to an opera.

JAMES STEPHENS

The Crock of Gold


Opera cuts to the chase--as death does. An art which seeks, more obviously than any other form, to break your heart.

JULIAN BARNES

Levels of Life

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People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul.

J. F. LAWTON

Pretty Woman

Tags: J. F. Lawton


Once you realize that opera is in fact flawed, and that opera is an art form both to be admired and to poke fun at, then I think you're more likely to get over any hesitation you may have.

MATT DOBKIN

Getting Opera: A Guide for the Cultured But Confused


Going to the Opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it.

HANNAH MORE

letter to her sister, 1775


Opera is like an oyster; it must be swallowed whole or not at all.

SPIKE HUGHES

Nights at the Opera


In an opera, the poetry must be the obedient daughter of music.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

letter to his father, October 13, 1781

Tags: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart


Nightfall, going to the opera. Changing worlds. Trading the working world for one of fantastic, fleeting leisure. Climbing giant staircases. Bronze women proffer fake torches, ceilings full of goddesses and gods ... in this architecture can be read a whole, no longer existent, world. The ghosts of a society wander here in a dream.

CATHERINE CLEMENT

Opera: The Undoing of Women

Tags: Catherine Clement


Opera fever infected the most surprising elements in the city and gave rise to a whole generation of Isoldes and Otellos and Aidas and Siegfrieds. But it never reached the extremes Dr. Urbino had hoped for, which was to see Italianizers and Wagnerians confronting each other with sticks and canes during the intermissions.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Love in the Time of Cholera

Tags: Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.

MOLIÈRE

attributed, The Moderate Soprano

Tags: Molière


There isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

MARK TWAIN

Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend

Tags: Mark Twain


If there's one good thing to be said about opera, it's that it makes a man appreciate all other forms of entertainment so much more.

MARK LAWRENCE

Prince of Fools


We are living in operatic times. Forget what you've heard about opera being remote and elitist. Opera is also the art form that, perhaps more than any other, specializes in heightened emotion, and in finding ways to communicate it.

ANNE MIDGETTE

"How to survive the next four years on social media? Opera can help.", Washington Post, February 10, 2017


Every theatre is an insane asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for the incurables.

FRANZ SCHALK

attributed, Losing the Plot in Opera: Myths and Secrets of the World's Great Operas