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Kiri Te Kanawa
Beloved Opera Singer
I decided to do Cosi and Don Giovanni side by side. One night would be Don Giovanni, one night would be Cosi fan tutte. One night off. One night it would be Cosi fan tutte and one night it would be Don Giovanni. Night off. I did that four times, and nearly killed myself, because we all did. There was a little bit of a pact amongst us, Tom Allen, and I can't remember who the others were. But we all decided to do these roles, two of them, for Covent Garden. It was like a Covent Garden fest. I think there was most probably (Magic) Flute, Don Giovanni, Cosi and Figaro. I'm not sure if I -- I'm pretty sure I did the Don Giovanni and the Cosi. I can't remember exactly. And in the middle of it, I did the royal wedding. And I thought, "How dumb is this, to have got myself to this stage that I've just actually wiped myself out? There's going to be no voice left." So I went and stayed up in London for two weeks in a hotel. So I'd go and do the performance, I'd walk down back to the hotel. It wasn't very far from Covent Garden. And I'd get in that bed and I'd sleep all day. And I'd get up, get up for air, go and have a meal and go back to bed. And I'd shut up for the whole two weeks and just stayed in bed and sang, bed, sang. And that was it.
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Kiri Te Kanawa
Beloved Opera Singer
Kiri Te Kanawa: When I first auditioned at Covent Garden, I was going and I was singing for English National Opera. And they didn't want me, or they couldn't place me. So I went back to Covent Garden and I sang all sorts of things like Capuleti e i Montecchi. And then they'd say, "Would you please come back and sing this aria?" So I prepared and I'd sing it. Then they'd ask me to sing another aria, so I'd sing that. And then another one and another one. And after nine auditions, I thought, "Can't they make up their mind?" And at any rate, that was it. So I think after all of that time, they were trying to place what my voice was doing, and then finally decided that I would do these smaller roles, along with doing the Countess. And then from that point on, I stayed at Covent Garden for five years.
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Twyla Tharp
Dancer and Choreographer
Twyla Tharp: You called it vision, I call it analyzing what my strengths were. It just so happened there was no market whatsoever for my strength, unless I was interested in becoming a show dancer, for which I tried, but I'm not tall enough. Also, when I auditioned for the Radio City Rockettes they said, "We love your fouettés, but can't you smile?" And things of that nature transpired between me and a commercial future. So, I managed to find a way of subsisting in the beginning by doing odd jobs, Kelly Girl temp work, selling perfume at Macy's, and any and everything to be able to sustain studying and beginning a career with a group of dancers who were willing to devote five years, really, of their lives to me, working very seriously, with complete commitment, for not a penny. This is not a pleasant route for many young people to consider, I would imagine. Either you have to be either hopelessly passionate, I guess is the word that gets devoted here, or very stupid. None of us were very stupid, we were all college graduates, actually. But we all believed that we could make an impact on something that was very important to us, which was dancing and the future of dancing, and what could be accomplished. We determined we would do that.
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Wayne Thiebaud
Painter and Teacher
If you're engaged, as you say, you're working, theoretically, so hard that you're willing to make mistakes, and you know that doing something once is never enough. As Degas says, "If you start drawing, be sure you draw it ten times." Correct it over and over again -- even a hundred times -- to get to that ballet slipper fitting on the shoe properly. In that instance, I think you don't think of creativity so much, because what you're doing is creating all the time. Some of it not very good, but it's a creation nonetheless, and the nerve of failure I think is paramount. Learning by mistakes. Modifying, reconstituting, reorganizing, over and over again.
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