Caroline Polachek Quotes

Mozart is always a bit of a challenge - you know, even though it is often given to very young singers, it is actually the most complicated to sing in many instances.

I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.

But I think it is more difficult to do a career as a lieder singer, and there have been less lieder singers.

I love Massenet - 'Manon' had been a wonderful role for me - and the music he wrote for 'Thais' is quite enjoyable and not terribly demanding in a vocal sense.

In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also; as the green grass.

It is essential to do everything possible to attract young people to opera so they can see that it is not some antiquated art form but a repository of the most glorious music and drama that man has created.

Music and opera are a big part of my life.

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.

I studied classical opera, so I was always singing in Italian and German and French.

I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't.

I don't listen to much modern composition.

Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone.

But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.

I would spend hours absorbing every intonation, every inflection - how the singer would convey a sentiment and how it would sound coming out of their head. All of those things I very carefully watched and absorbed, and so I guess I was studying my whole life, although not in any sort of conventional way.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

My Mozart career began as a teenager in Los Angeles, singing arias from 'Le Nozze di Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni.'

Any time I've performed on one of the major stages, whether it be Covent Garden or the Paris Opera or the Bolshoi or the Mariinsky, those are really the top memorable moments for me.

I am a singer, first and foremost, but the medium happens to be the cello.

Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It's good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.

No two composers were more totally at home in front of the piano than Debussy and Chopin, hands to keys to strings to sound waves to pen and paper in one perfect gesture of inspiration.

I like classical music. I especially like the French composers: Ravel in particular. Debussy. That's so soothing in a nervous world.

I grew up loving symphonies. Beethoven is beautiful.

I don't believe in a composer who is only able to compose, who can't play or conduct, can only use a computer. If that trend continues there will be no more symphonies, no more oratorios.

To play opera, to play Wagner, it's a great joy.

When I got into college, I got into operatic vocalists, like Leontyne Price.