Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You went to your first Broadway play or musical at some point, right? Come to opera.
There are many, many more small theater spaces than there were when I was starting out.
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.
Concert-going has become much less the thing to do, while people are still going to opera. This might be a harsh judgment, but it could easily happen that orchestras could slowly atrophy.
I like the idea of people coming to opera for the first time and finding it an enjoyable experience. I don't like the fact that opera is seen as elitist and all black ties and that stuff.
Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.
Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.
I graduated from high school early so I could move to New York to do 'A Little Night Music' out of the New York City Opera.
I am an opera virgin; I'd far prefer to see a musical such as 'Guys and Dolls.'
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.