the parterre box interviews

I think Janacek wrote Marty as a glamorous figure to show how much people look only at the surface, like a mask. The public can accept the egomania of her personality because they see her as a larger than life theater personality. But deep inside all that, the glamour is perfectly meaningless. -- Anja Silja

I thought that someone from Bayreuth could come hear me in Dresden, and that didn't happen, and apparently you don't get into Bayreuth unless you audition -- and send a picture! So right now I'm not singing at Bayreuth. -- Deborah Voigt

And so I thought: Hmm. I kind of like "Alessandra," actually. "Alessandra." And then I had to choose a last name. Since the first was long, the last should be short. Easy to pronounce, no matter what country I'm in. Easy to spell. "Marc" seemed to go well with "Alessandra," so Alessandra Marc was born. -- Alessandra Marc

My sound, until recently, was the only countertenor that appealed to mainstream operagoers - the people who say, "Ugh, countertenors." But in a sense, that's unfair. Where would I be with all the countertenors who came before? -- David Daniels
I like theater; I like communication. I can appreciate a really great voice for about five or ten minutes, but if there's nothing else behind it, then it gets boring. -- Catherine Malfitano
When you're a kid from a small town in upstate New York, you don't think about going into opera as a career. It never occurs to you. You know, football is where it's at. -- Richard Leech

One thing critics and performers have in common is they both must have big healthy egos. They're not going to be shaken. -- John Ardoin

Sam Ramey has always been my idol, one of the reasons why I started to sing. In high school I listened to his recordings and said, oh my God, I would love to be able to sing this way. -- Richard Bernstein

The humor is there totally to communicate an ideal. Every tiny thing has a reason, tied to some tradition, something that really happened. I saw a Scarpia move after he was dead - Bastianini eased himself into a more comfortable position, and Tucci just glared at him. So our Scarpia sneezes. -- Ira Siff

My father took me to hear Joan Sutherland in Sonnambula in, when, 1963? I can see it so perfectly in my mind, as if I just saw it this year. The vision of Sutherland, in that pale green dress and that long red hair, sleepwalking - she just seemed like the most beautiful image, in this romantic production. -- Charles Busch