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"Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance."
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"The place trembled with sound. I didn't need to do anything. They would do it all. But you had to be careful. Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience. They had paid to get in; they had paid for drinks; they intended to get something and if you didn't give it to them they'd run you right into the ocean."

"I say this quite deliberately, this is the finest Shakespearean performance I've seen."

"When we contemplate the heroes of Christianity, and compare our feeble efforts with their astonishing performance and self devotion, we should fall into despair, were there not a few softening features, by which they are brought back to the ranks of humanity."

"As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive."

"A magician with decreasing practice sessions will give defective performances."

"A lawyer's performance in the courtroom is responsible for about 25 percent of the outcome; the remaining 75 percent depends on the facts."

"To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it."

"I take the longest to get ready of anyone. I've been going in two hours before the show every performance."

"Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance."

"If life is a stage and you are your own agent, then don't hesitate to play the character you wish to play."
Explore more quotes by Michael Tippett

"Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you."

"Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score."

"The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time."

"Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry."
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