“Football is the ballet of the masses.”

— Dmitri Shostakovich

Last update May 20, 2025. History

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Dmitri Shostakovich 32

Russian composer and pianist 1906–1975

Damien Richardson (1947) Irish footballer and manager

City Edition, Vol. 22, Issue 12, p. 5.

“If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Source: The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 1 : Ideology As Material Power, Section 4 : The Social Function of Sexual Suppression

“Ballet is the fairies' baseball.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

Oscar Levant, as quoted in "Oscar the Magnificent" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/161384355/ by Burt Prelutsky, in The Los Angeles Times (January 26, 1969), p. 468

“I never conduct any of the ballets I conducted for the Ballets Russes, without my mind's eye being completely aware of the dancers.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Monteux

“But what have those colourful ballets to do with the opera's? Ballets, that do not concern the opera at the least. Do they not spoil all possible action, that they in their course violently interrupt?”

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756–1792) German composer

Was sollen aber die buntschäckigten Balletten in den Opern? Balletten, die auf die Oper nicht die geringste Beziehungen haben. Verderben sie nicht alle mögliche Wirkung, die sie in ihrem Gange gewaltsam unterbrechen?
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Etwas von und über Musik fürs Jahr 1777