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"Well, the very best operas are the ones written by the very best composers."
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"If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role."

"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."

"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."

"Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama."

"In no instance is there to be a musical or opera of Inherit the Wind because it doesn't sing. It's an intellectual play."

"I don't think an opera house is ever a place that can make you entirely happy."

"A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator."

"The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles."
Explore more quotes by John Eaton

"What's important for me is to communicate the vision that I have in sound with the audience that's hearing it."

"I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on."

"But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world."

"Nevertheless, one doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this is a quarter tone sharp, or flat."

"Well, let me, first of all, say, that as a microtonal composer, I've never been much of a theorist."

"I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it."

"However, yes, especially as one gets older, you know, you really hope that your music will become more generally available, even though some of the performances might be riddled with faults."
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