The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.
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.
When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - it's beyond belief.
I had a year at 3 when I wanted to be a conductor in the opera.
'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.
I was attracted to opera when I was 15 or 16. A very rich man in England bankrupted himself to put on a lot of opera during the war, but he converted a lot of people, myself included, in the process.
My grandma was actually a pretty well-known opera singer in Cuba, and then my mom was a ballerina. Two of my three sisters are dancers, so we grew up in the arts.
I think what we've been able to do with 'Longmire' is balance this procedural with a bit of a soap opera, and it's a character study of this character, Walt Longmire, and the people around him.
I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.
The fact that I could secure an opera engagement made me realize I had within me the making of an artist, if I would really labor for such an end. When I became thoroughly convinced of this, I was transformed from an amateur into a professional in a single day.
I took opera lessons. I can't read music to save my life, but I would just copy and get away with it. I think that they thought I could read music, but I can't. I would just listen.
Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.
When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.
Opera - above and beyond anything else - is about the music, and it should be about the music.
I want to write theater pieces, opera, or some kind of amalgamation where there is singing, music and theater.
Shameless self-publicity works, of course: living your life as a soap opera.
There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That's not necessarily true and hasn't been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger.
I was 6, and I was in the opera 'Carmen.' My dad sang opera and got me into the children's chorus. I was super fat at the time and didn't make eye contact with anyone. I knew I loved acting ever since.
We did a student-initiated project of 'A Little Night Music', which was the first time that all of the divisions - music, dance, drama, opera - came together and put on a piece. It was a black box kind of feel. We had to get costumes that were pieced together. We had our own lighting that we finagled.
My father's an opera nut, and my stepmother used to work at the Metropolitan Opera, so I had a lot of opera immersion. I like the grandness and pretention of it.
I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places.
Nothing will ever be as big as 'The Phantom of the Opera' for me.
The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they're not too ridiculously expensive.
