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All Carlisle Floyd Quotes
I was interested in what was really going on in Salem at that time, and I resolved to investigate this seemingly unorthodox treatment of the people and the period.
Carlisle Floyd
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If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
Carlisle Floyd
58% of people like this quote
We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.
Carlisle Floyd
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I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.
Carlisle Floyd
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It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.
Carlisle Floyd
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You can't possibly predict what will last or not. But once you attempt to write for the ages, you're doomed.
Carlisle Floyd
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Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.
Carlisle Floyd
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The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.
Carlisle Floyd
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It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.
Carlisle Floyd
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When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.
Carlisle Floyd
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The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.
Carlisle Floyd
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There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.
Carlisle Floyd
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The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.
Carlisle Floyd
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People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses.
Carlisle Floyd
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Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.
Carlisle Floyd
52% of people like this quote
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