Opera Quotes

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

I’d like to see a nude opera, because when they hit those high notes, I bet you can really see it in those genitals.

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

Parsifal – the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20.

One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to hear it a second time.

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.

At the opera in Milan with my daughter and me, Needleman leaned out of his box and fell into the orchestra pit. Too proud to admit it was a mistake, he attended the opera every night for a month and repeated it each time.

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

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

The golden age of opera, from Mozart to Verdi, coincided with the golden age of liberal humanism, of unquestioning belief in freedom and progress… To say that operas are more difficult to write does not mean that they are impossible. This would only follow if we should cease to believe in free will and personality […]