Operatic Repertoire Quotes

Opera: I like it, except for all those howling sopranos and caterwauling tenors. (Why can't tenors sing like men?)

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.

People may have thought that we changed a lot. I don't think we came in with that intention. Certain things I can't stomach. But I tried to be as collegial as possible. When you sign that contract, you're tied to that opera house to try your best. But every different team will play with a different intensity.

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.

Miss Renata Tebaldi was always sweet and very firm... she had dimples of iron.

When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging.

Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.

The more opera is dead, the more it flourishes.

I tend to sing opera and showtunes in the shower. I don't know why, but when I get in the shower I turn into this big fat opera lady.

I conclude that the Wagnerian operas which are already in the repertoire, and other masterworks as well, stand in no further need of my services.

I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.

I'm lucky because my repertoire is so specific, and theaters are interested in me singing my repertoire because it is not done so much. I'm pretty well settled in my repertoire. I like what I sing. My voice is high, and there is not much in baroque opera for higher tenor.

I had to learn all the pieces backward and forward [to play it in "Florence Foster Jenkins"]. We practiced on weekends. It was very much like being in school, except it was with Meryl Streep. Like, I would go to her apartment and we would practice Mozart's "Queen of the Night."

I've done a lot of operas. I've probably done more different kind of operas than anybody.