Of course opera fans all owe Agnes Varis a lot, what with the Met rush tickets and all that, plus La Cieca, being a lady of a certain age herself, should be the last one to talk. But she can’t help hearing this quote from Varis in the foghorn rasp of Miss Blankenship: “The opera’s like Broadway but better.  It’s got sex, it’s got incest, it’s got rape…. You introduce young people to music, you’ve got them for life.” [Wall Street Journal]