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.

There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.

The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.

I find it enormously valuable to be sure that that the pacing is what I think it is and that the scenes have the shape I think they have musically and dramatically.

People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.

Opera is given so little attention in the national press.

If I felt that one of my operas did not come off I would certainly say so.

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.

Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.

I was interested in what was really going on in Salem at that time, and I resolved to investigate this seemingly unorthodox treatment of the people and the period.

The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.

When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.

If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.

If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!

You can't possibly predict what will last or not. But once you attempt to write for the ages, you're doomed.

I think anything that is expressed directly and as honestly as possible will last.

There's the Bacon society, which is fostered by his fourth wife Helen Bacon, but I don't know what kind of performances his music gets. He wrote symphonic music and some chorale music.

We don't have access to a national forum that we had in those days, through the news magazines which were the television news of the time. It's very disturbing to me that we've sort of been pushed to the corners.

Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.

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.

I was encouraged by my mother and, to a lesser extent, by my father.

I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.

It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.

Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life.

I love opera, I love writing for the voice, I love telling stories with music.

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.

I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses.

I have the absolute utmost respect for soap opera actors now. They work harder than any actor I know in any other medium. And they don't get very much approbation for it.

This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it.

I was the first movie star to plunge into night-time soap opera.

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a 'grand passion' than of a grand opera.

A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

I was more of a light opera singer, not really much of a lounge singer.

Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me.

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.

We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.

I like soap opera acting. If it's done really well, there's nothing better. It's old school. It's like what those melodramas in the '30s and '40s were like.

Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance.

I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.