Opera Career Quotes

When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place.

I originally wanted to be an opera singer. I studied classical voice at the University of Washington but soon realised I didn't have the instrument or the discipline. The road for opera singers is more difficult than for actors.

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

I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!

You can make a debut in 25 operas. But to make a debut at the Metropolitan Opera is huge.

I sang opera for over four years when I was younger.

I wrote my own pop songs and sang one of them when I went into a stupid beauty competition when I was 16. That was my public debut, and it made my mother even more determined that I should go into opera!

I decided I was going to be an opera star. I was about 12.

I had a schoolmaster who was a supernumerary at Glyndebourne Opera, and through, I got a job as a walk-on in Peter Hall's production of 'Don Giovanni' there in 1975 or 1976.

Much later in life, though, Gracie made a major contribution to the opera world. She stayed out of it.

I wasn't the best in my class at the Royal Academy. There was a really good soprano and baritone who were technically better and are doing really well in opera now. But I was definitely the best mezzo-soprano in my class, because I was the only one of those!