My auntie Anne took me to 'Phantom of the Opera' in London. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Americans, they have an incredible operatic tradition: the Metropolitan Opera House is - if not the most prestigious - one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world for over 100 years.
If I can transport audiences for the three or four hours they're at the opera, to make them forget all of their worries, the bills they have to pay and all that, then I've done my job. That, for me, is very gratifying.
When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.
I don't like rock opera with back beats.
Opera is complex for those who perform it, but also for those who listen to it. It takes more time, more patience and more spirit of sacrifice. All this is well worth it because opera offers such deep sensations that they will remain in a heart for a lifetime.
That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.
Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.
The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever.
Really, the impetus driving me is I've always sung, but I like to act, I like drama, I like text, which is why opera is something I've come late to, I'd say.
As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly.
But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.
We grew up listening to a variety of music, such as Gospel/Christian, R&B old/new school, jazz, blues, Mozart, Mary Poppins, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, just to name a few. I love opera, too - went to state in high school as a soloist.
I've always wanted to be on a soap opera.
Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.
People think top singers are overpaid, but opera houses have a top fee, which is a good thing. Of course concerts are different- everyone wants to make as much money as possible.
My real passion is for opera. It was born and developed by listening to records, and my dream as a child was to record entire operas when I grew up, and this dream came true.
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.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
Rock pools, so-named because they have been hammered out of rocks at the ocean's edge, are one of Sydney's defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known.
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.
I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.
The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.
I don't like reality shows and have never watched them, but I'm addicted to 'Real Housewives' because it's authentic old-time soap opera reborn!
I had a soap opera, and my next job was working with Kyle McLachlan on The Invisible Man.
I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera.
The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.
I was into opera as a kid - I'd play 'Carmen' and sing and dance. My mom signed me up for a theater group before preschool, and I never looked back.
I'm from a small Irish family of 10, so there always was music in the house. Growing up, my older sisters had things like 'South Pacific' and opera on.
In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.
In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.
I started a novel in the back of a notebook, and it was great because it looked like I was taking notes. And I just, I kept it up, it was sort of fantasy, it was part soap opera. It was utterly dreadful, but that's how I got hooked.
I never breathe through the nose, not when I'm singing. In the opera, you don't have so much time. That's fine at the beginning of an opera or after somebody else has been doing an aria, and you want to get a good fresh start.
I have no desire to become a crossover artiste, singing with microphones. I believe in opera; that it is something that young people would love if they had a chance to hear it.
I'd love to have the time to learn to sing opera properly rather than bellowing half-formed fragments of melody in exuberant moments.
It's more fun to have a name rather than a number. I think this gives our products a personality. I get the names from literature, movies, opera, traveling, nature, poetry, sometimes even the street. I keep a small book that I write in. I wake up in the middle of the night and jot down a name for a lipstick or an eyeshadow.
