Sayings about Opera

Bed is the poor man’s opera. ~ Italian Proverb

My worry is that opera will become an historic art form as opposed to a living, breathing thing. ~ Renee Fleming

An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience. ~ Joseph Addison

Opera is a type of drama whose integral existence is determined from point to point and in the whole by musical articulation. Dramma per musica. ~ Joseph Kerman

To sing opera, one needs two things: the voice and the passion – and above all, the passion. ~ Andrea Bocelli

[Opera] does not call so much for an imaginative ear as for an imaginative eye, an eye which can see beyond little absurdities toward great truths. ~ George Mare

The aim of Opera has ever been, and still is today, confined to Music. Merely so as to afford Music with a colourable pretext for her own excursions, is the purpose of Drama dragged on — naturally, not to curtail the ends of Music, but rather to serve her simply as a means. ~ Richard Wagner

The opera is like a husband with a foreign title: expensive to support, hard to understand, and therefore a supreme social challenge. ~ Cleveland Amory

Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian. ~ H. L. Mencken

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. ~ Ed Gardner

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

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. ~ Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

The opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings. ~ Author Unknown

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

I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands, and celebrate all the arts. ~ Franco Zeffirelli

The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love. ~ Dario Argento

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it. ~ Hannah More

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That’s not love, it’s just rubbish. ~ Peter Shaffer

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house. ~ Maria Callas

It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process. ~ Lord Clark

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong. ~ Terry Pratchett

The more opera is dead, the more it flourishes. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul. ~ Fanny Burney

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