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"The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles."
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"Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama."
"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."
"I don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy."
"I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them."
"Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations."
"Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint."
"If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role."
Explore more quotes by Harrison Birtwistle
"The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names."
"I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door."
"This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it."
"My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!"
"Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it."
"The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude."
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