Yes, the woman could act. At the very moment she entered, you saw in full Aida, Anna Bolena, Gioconda, felt their eyes on you even before they uttered a sound. ... The gestures so authentically antique, yet strangely devised entirely on her own were completely equalized into her stylistics, with one set for the Greeks and Romans, another for post-Renaissance royalty, a third for more contemporary characters. Yet, all this was subsidiary to the heavy Kunst of developing the psychology of the roles under the supervision of the music, of singing the acting....
Maria Callas
I am late with the new Doris Lessing [The Golden Notebook]. I make no apology: it has taken me a long time to read (568 pages of close print) and at the end of it all I feel cheated. This talented writer has attempted an experiment which has failed, essayed a scale which is beyond her....This is a book of revolt political, social, sexual. Anna [the heroine] became a Communist in South Africa, seeing in Communism a "moral energy" not to be found in other creeds or in the long-entrenched privileged class. Anna is also concerned with being a "free woman" rebelling against traditional male dominance and with achieving maximal erotic fulfilment....There is no doubt about the great moral virtues here intelligence, honesty, integrity but it is the aesthetic virtues that seem to be lacking. The characters do not really interest us: when we have dialogue it is strangely unnatural Mrs Lessings old singleness of vision, her strength as a writer, is not to be found here. [Review in the English provincial newspaper the Yorkshire Post, 1962]
Anthony Burgess
I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment.
John Cage
Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.
Kenneth Clark
People will often say that opera singers sound too stiff and operatic when singing contemporary music. This is because the vowels in an operatic style tend to be more open, whereas in a rock style singers tend to thin out the vowel. There is nothing wrong, and everything right, in opening the vowel in the higher register so that the higher notes can be sustained. Elvis Presley was very open in his singing style even though he was 'the' rock and roller.
Elvis Presley
The acting was always disappointing. Silly stories about nonsense people. I felt really cheated by acting, because I've never really felt anything from it. I don't wanna be the women on television, who are always nice and do the right thing. I want to be the woman who makes mistakes and gets away with it. The Night Porter is my favourite film. Charlotte Rampling is boiling with rage and going, "I can do it worse. I'm badder, and dirtier than you will ever be, and you'll never break me." And I just love that.
Sienna Guillory
Callas, Maria
Callender, James T.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z