I loved singing. But can you imagine my voice in an opera house?

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

I'd love to come to Australia. I'd love to walk about the Sydney Opera House.

One of my first memories is running up and down the theatre at Wakefield Opera House.

Wednesday a junior came to me, and told me I was to be hazed as I left the Opera House Friday night.

My father was a welder on the second-highest sail, so the Opera House has a special place in my heart.

I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.

The jewellery I wear on stage in the opera house is not real, but the bling-bling I wear in concerts? Those are real!

I hear what people have said about what they want to see the Opera House used for and what they don't want to see it used for.

We used to have front-row seats for the Grand Opera House pantomime every year, and once the dame May McFettridge got me up on-stage.

Poetry is all I write, whether for books or readings or for the National Theatre or for the opera house and concert hall or even for TV.

At the moment I'm enjoying a new challenge at the Royal Opera House, but I'm also keen to pursue my interest in television and particularly in science.

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

One of the most wonderful memories in my life was when I sang at the Opera House in Sydney. I will never forget that. It is one of the most beautiful Houses I have ever sung in my life.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

I performed in Sydney some years ago for the Sydney Festival and I am just so pleased to be returning to the wonderful Sydney Opera House and also performing in Melbourne for the first time.

Americans, they have an incredible operatic tradition: the Metropolitan Opera House is - if not the most prestigious - one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world for over 100 years.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.

Rock pools, so-named because they have been hammered out of rocks at the ocean's edge, are one of Sydney's defining characteristics, along with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, though not as well known.

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.

The Opera House guidelines have from time to time been amended, whether it's for other sporting events or other causes. The guidelines have always been stretched in the part and the commercialisation of the Opera House has always been there.

I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book.

I think people care. If not, why do so many people spend money going on vacations to see architecture? They go to the Parthenon, to Chartres, to the Sydney Opera House. They go to Bilbao... Something compels them, and yet we live surrounded by everything but great architecture.

Tiles, the best furniture, fabrics, bath fixtures, bronze - just leaf through any design magazine and you immediately understand they're all 'Made in Italy.' We have the premier opera house in the world, La Scala, and behind the Nobel given to CERN is the research of many Italians.

I think it's the responsibility of a major opera house not only to cultivate debate and get people thinking, but also to be interfaced with things that challenge them. To challenge its audience and not just deliver things that they know, even though some of those things are wonderful.

The Royal Opera House? I once had the immense privilege of appearing there and was awed by the air of refinement of those seemingly ethereal beings who floated about in the highest echelons of musical accomplishment, effortlessly producing virtuoso performances in several different languages.

Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge.

One of our books has been made into a musical, 'The Great American Mousical,' which I directed at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. And another, 'Simeon's Gift,' has been adapted for a symphony orchestra and five performers. I'm also a very proud member of the board of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The work that launched Snohetta into the architectural big leagues was their Oslo Opera House, which will certainly rank among the firm's highlights whatever else they may do. Although this is by any measure a triumph of city planning, the building itself is not quite a masterpiece, though very fine indeed.

People may have thought that we changed a lot. I don't think we came in with that intention. Certain things I can't stomach. But I tried to be as collegial as possible. When you sign that contract, you're tied to that opera house to try your best. But every different team will play with a different intensity.

In Hamburg, there are three major orchestras, an opera house, and one of the great concert-hall acoustics in Europe at the Laeiszhalle, in a town a fifth the size of London. And that's not unusual. In Germany, there are dozens of towns with two or three orchestras. The connection with music goes very, very deep.

I was 11 when a teacher suggested to my parents that they should send me to drama classes to curb my disruptive ways in the classroom. The next Saturday I was acting, and thereafter it became a ritual of my youth to see a show at the Belvoir on Sundays and, if I was lucky, another at the Opera House on Monday after school.

Misty Copeland is making history. During American Ballet Theatre's current season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Copeland will alight on that storied Lincoln Center stage, making her New York debut as the Swan Queen in the iconic masterpiece Swan Lake - a crowning achievement for any dancer, regardless of the color of her skin.

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