opera quotes

I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

- Sir Edward Victor Appleton
  In the Observer, 28  Aug.

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

-W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
Quoted in Time, 29 Dec1961.

   Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

- Robert Charles Benchley
Quoted in Ian Crofton and Donald Fraser A Dictionary of Musical Quotations (1985).

The opera†is the only one in existence that might conceivably have been composed by God.

- Sir Neville Cardus
  Of Mozart's The Magic Flute. In the Manchester Guardian.

People are wrong when they say the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That's what's wrong with it.

- Sir Noe«  l Peirce Coward
  Design for Living.

'Bed,'as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it,'isthe poor man's opera.'

- Aldous Leonard Huxley
  Heaven and Hell.

   Some of the opera houses in Italy had to be burnt down because people could neither see nor hear. They gave up seeing years ago, but they did enjoy the music.

- Philip Cortelyou Johnson
  Informal talk,  Architectural  Association School of Architecture, 28 Nov. Collected in Writings (1979).

   I don't have a rock voice. I have to force it. I am like an opera singer.

-Meat Loaf
  In the Observer,7 Dec.

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself.

- Dame Nellie real name Helen Mitchell Melba
  Melodies and Memories.

The opera†is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

- H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
 Letter to Isaac Goldberg.

   I was born for opera buffa, as well Thou knowest. Little skill, a little heart, and that is all. So beThou blessed and admit me to Paradise.

- Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
 Manuscript inscription on the score of his 'Petite Messe Solennelle'.

Onegoestoseeatragedy tobe moved, tothe opera one goes either for want of any other interest or to facilitate digestion.

-Voltaire pseudonym of  Fran c° ois Marie Arouet
Quoted inJ Wechsberg The Opera (1972).

Like German opera, too long and too loud.

- Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
  Of warfare. Attributed.