Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

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.

People are wrong when they say that the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be — that's what's wrong with it!

The error in the art-genre of Opera consists herein: a Means of expression (Music) has been made the end, while the End of expression (the Drama) has been made a means.

The English take their pleasures sadly after the fashion of their country.

And all the world over, each nation's the same;
They've simply no mission of playing the game.
They argue with umpires - they cheer when they've won
And they practice beforehand, which ruins the fun.
The English are moral, the English are good
And clever, and modest, and misunderstood!

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible a plea as baseball in Italian.

An oratorical style often has the same drawbacks as those operas in which the music prevents you from hearing the words. Here the words prevent you from seeing the thoughts.

We English certainly do not like working for work's sake. There is nothing inside us that cries to be set going at an early hour and kept at it until a late hour. We have no private passion for being industrious.

Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, a defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.

lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you were reading law or medicine or some other vocational subject, but in the case of English, the natural thing to do was talk a lot, listen to music, drink coffee and wine, read books, and go to plays, perhaps be in plays…

English students don't spend much time on their studies. They're more interested in partying and having fun.

Personally I like the English style better. It is not quite so brittle, and the people as a rule, just wear clothes and drink drinks. There is more sense of background, as if Cheesecake Manor really existed all around and not just the part the camera sees; there are more long walks over the Downs and the characters don’t all try to behave as if they had just been tested by MGM. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

Hey, why do you sing with an English accent? I guess it’s too late to change it now.