Roger Allam Quotes

More people are listening to opera, and I'm happy - everybody must be given that opportunity.

Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

I do worry because it takes all types to make our culture, to make our art. We need it to be available to all.

Ballet is an incredible art, but it can be a bit elitist, which is a really big turn off to me.

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

Art is for everybody.

I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera.

I believe in the democratization of the arts. What do I mean by that? I think museums, with some exceptions, have a responsibility to educate a much broader public.

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur.

There are people who are just very, very sniffy and snobby and have always sort of looked down their noses at me.

Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world.

All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery.

Music enriches people's lives in the same way paintings and literature do. Everybody deserves that.

The audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events—I’m thinking particularly of the Proms [traditional patriotic promenade concerts]—is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can.

Doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on.

In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.

Free society! We sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the northern, and especially the New England states, are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meets with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman’s body servant.

It was my idea for high culture and popular culture to be treated equally.

I don't make a particular distinction between 'high art' and 'low art.' Music is there for everybody. It's a river we can all put our cups into and drink it and be sustained by it.

Art suggests stuff that is traded like money, that is kept in galleries and that belongs to the elite, whereas experience is something that everybody has in the course of living.

I want to bring awareness to the lack of diversity in ballet, and feel like that's a large part of my purpose.

It makes me sad there is still some intellectual snobbery out there.

Art and culture are the greatest weapons against hate agendas, entrenched ideologies, and power structures that harbor and promote the business of divisiveness.

All of our lives are enriched by our culture, from blockbuster films, best-selling video games, independent music, and internationally-renowned museums and art collections, to theatre, opera, ballet, literary festivals and performance poetry.