Don Flap

Famous quotes containing the words don and/or flap:

    If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)

    Let Sporus tremble—‘What? That thing of silk,
    Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
    Satire or sense, alas, can Sporus feel,
    Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’
    Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
    This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
    Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
    Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)