Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process. - Kenneth Clark

His long struggle with physical passion was almost over, and, as with many other great sensualists, its place had been taken by an obsession with death.

I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room.

What on earth has given opera its prestige in western civilisation — a prestige that has outlasted so many different fashions and ways of thought? Why are people prepared to sit silently for three hours listening to a performance of which they do not understand a word and of which they very seldom know the plot? Why do quite small towns all over Germany and Italy still devote a large portion of their budgets to this irrational entertainment? Partly, of course, because it is a display of skill, like a football match. But chiefly, I think, because it is irrational. "What is too silly to be said may be sung" — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.