Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.

As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked.

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

Fate has blessed me.

For better or for worse, in 'The Last Savage,' I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.

God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.

I have always felt that art, especially music, is but a demonstration of God.

I have the feeling that everybody was waiting for me to die so they could rediscover me. Then they found out I'm not dead yet, so they are rediscovering me while I'm still alive.

I loathe my body. The liver spots, the sagging flesh.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.

I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.

One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'

People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.

The only thing that interests me in music is to be able to reach into the, let's call it, 'collective unconscious' of what is noblest in the human spirit, the way you find in the music of Mozart and Beethoven and Verdi that wonderful quality that not a note can be changed.

There are three reasons why I live in Scotland. First, I like silence, and you have to be a millionaire to buy silence in Italy. Second, I like cold weather. Third, in Italy I have too many relatives and know too many people, so I never get a quiet time.

Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.

Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life.

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

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

I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses.

I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know in any other medium. And they don't get very much approbation for it.

This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it.

I was the first movie star to plunge into night-time soap opera.

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a 'grand passion' than of a grand opera.

A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

I was more of a light opera singer, not really much of a lounge singer.

Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.

I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like.

Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance.

I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.

Opera? Just what the world needs: more fat women screaming.

I cannot go to the Opera, because I have forsworn all expense which does not end in pleasing me.

If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it.

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.

The opera always loses money. That's as it should be. Opera has no business making money.