While singers are better known for what they have to sing, rather than what they have to say, we found some quotes we think are well worth reading.
Beverly Sills
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now; you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.
Renee Fleming
I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let’s say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that.
Maria Callas
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. When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I’m slipping. That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil’s means; great teachers foresee a pupil’s ends.
Luciano Pavarotti
If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.
Marian Anderson
It is easy to look back, self-indulgently, feeling pleasantly sorry for oneself and saying I didn’t have this, and I didn’t have that. But it is only the grown woman regretting the hardships of a little girl who never thought they were hardships at all. She had the things that really mattered. A singer starts by having his instrument as a gift from God . . . When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy. When I sing, I don’t want them to see that my face is black. I don’t want them to see that my face is white. I want them to see my soul. And that is colorless.
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Michael Vincent is the Editor-in-chief Ludwig Van and CEO of Museland Media. He publishes regularly and writes occasionally. A specialist in digital media for over 15 years, he has worked as a senior editor and is a former freelance classical music critic for the Toronto Star. Michael holds a Doctorate in Music from the University of Toronto.
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