English Comic Opera

Famous quotes containing the words english, comic and/or opera:

    The boneless quality of English conversation, which, so far as I have heard it, is all form and no content. Listening to Britons dining out is like watching people play first-class tennis with imaginary balls.
    Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)

    Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true and false but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.
    —Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 7, Yale University Press (1961)

    The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.
    —Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)