“The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.”
Note in the score to The Poisoned Kiss (1936).
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Ralph Vaughan Williams 13
English composer 1872–1958Related quotes

“I've been waiting for that! (After an audience member requests "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.)”
1993-11-18 at Sony Music Studios, New York City, New York (MTV Unplugged).
Stage banter
“Give yourself time before rushing to respond to requests from your boss, colleagues and clients”
Quoted in the National Newspaper, UAE (May 12th 2016) http://www.thenational.ae/business/the-life/reliability-counts-more-than-promises
Miscellaneous Quotes in the Press (2002-Present)
Context: I once asked a group of young managers in a workshop: would you prefer to work with a friend who never keeps their word or an enemy who does? The entire group said they would prefer to work with enemies, those they could in some sense rely upon. Give yourself time before rushing to respond to requests from your boss, colleagues and clients. Avoid being vague in how you respond. If you are not sure you can do what is being asked of you, do not say “I’ll try and let you know" as people could assume you will be completing the work.

“The purpose of a purpose? Tunes you to meaningful things you wouldn't be aware of, otherwise.”
23 May 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/205390843010498561
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“I don't think MTV would let us play that. (After an audience member requests "Rape Me.")”
1993-11-18 at Sony Music Studios, New York City, New York (MTV Unplugged).
Stage banter
" Fanfare http://englishatheist.org/mencken/Rascoe-Mencken.htm", in H. L. Mencken (1920) http://www.archive.org/details/hlmencken00newyrich
Context: When H. L. Mencken unpacks his idiomatic brasses, tunes up his verbal strings, and gets in readiness his phrasal wood winds to orchestrate a fugue in damnation or in praise of man, god or book, his all too meagre audience cancels all other engagements to be on hand at the initial presentation. The result, that audience knows, will be an experience of pure enjoyment. His musicianship is unfailing. His program is unsatisfactory only in its impermanence. Though the theme he proposes is invariably Mencken — Mencken apropos of this or that — he gives it infinite and intricate variations.

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD
Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 11 : Romantic Opera: Politics, Trash, and High Art

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)
Context: At a certain age, you have to make yourself useful for others. When you have lived and life has given you an experience, whether good or bad, the moment arrives when you should pass on what you know. Rather than turn into a dumb old person, you should go further every time. Aging does not exist, neither does mental decline. The memory can have less capacity to find a word or maybe you can feel less sexual desire, less virulence, but there is no reason for desire to have disappeared. If, during your life you have worked the emotions, when you mature you begin to know sublime feelings, which you did not have when you were young because nature did not let you. It takes forty years to find yourself. The true opening of the consciousness cannot be had before this age. From there, the journey begins.