"Aurora, du Drecksau!"

"Laß Dich überraschen..."
-Rudi Carrell or Ina Häberle

Lisa: Does this look familiar?
Andrea: No, we were on the other side of the road.
(Bit of conversation between Lisa the tenor and Andrea (evil mezzo :->) Visaggio

"Listen, if you don't read, we start to sing!"
-Olaf Digel, speaking on behalf of the Vocaholics

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" (Pause/realization) "Oh my God!"
-Gabriel Crouch, new KS 2nd bari, in Orange County, Nov 2 96

"What are you doing here?"
-Gabs C. in St. Paul, Feb 22 97

"Hi, I'm Doug."
-Maestro Bruck to my mother

"Hypocrite dit..."
-Lionel Huddlestone, in the role of Sganarelle in "Le Médecin Volant" by Molière

Jim: OK, talk dirty to me!
Sascha: (reading menu) ...pork chops!
Jim: I said *dirty*, not *unclean*!
(Bit of conversation at Denny's between Jim the Tenor Boydston and Sascha the Diva LaRusso)

"Spandex!"
-Laurent Gélibert, in the role of Guillaume in "La Farce du Maître Pierre Pathelin"

"If you did not find the person you were looking for, help is available"
-from the Cambridge University email directory

"Don't eat Mister Monty!"
-me, having misheard something either Andrea V. (evil mezzo) or Maria G. (mad soprano) had said

"Ah! Capella!"
-Andrea V. - well, she started it...

"I'm buff now, babe!"
-Dr. Gray to his wife, on the effects of working out

"Is this auntie Eileen?"
-An anonymous Yorkshireman (I'd better hide now...)

"Who needs gay porn when you have Divo?"
-Pip Bullock, honorary recipient of the Wilde impersonator award, about John Mark Ainsley (and *not* Eric the labbie-and-old-married-Jewish-man!)

Merja: They'll treat you like queens!
Jay: But I don't want to be treated like a queen!
Merja: Wait till we get you in that white blouse and colorful skirt.
(Bit of conversation between Merja Soria and Jay Easton on the subject of performing for the Finnish section of Balboa Park. Really, that's all it was!)

"I AM Maria Garcia."
-She IS Maria Garcia, she really is.

"I know, let's go vandalize cement!"
-The bloody violinist, in reply to "I'm really bored"

"An opera with a lead character named Max can't be so bad."
-M. Chodos, Venezuelan Cowboy, on that Weber opera.

"I'm not that conceited!"
-Aldo J. Alcalá

Some Alma Mater quotes from Aldo Alcalá, the bloody violinist:
"Gee, they must have really liked her..."
"She must have transferred..."
"Dude, that woman's conceited!"
"She was Mexican, like me..."

"Please! My tone's so straight it couldn't even drive through Hillcrest!"
-me, to my voice teacher when she said we should straighten the tone for Baroque purposes

"Why? Is she missing?"
-Kellie Evans-O'Connor, giving us a line from "Carmen"

"Doesn't that mean 'Hiker's Night Song'?"
-Aldo, translating "Wanderers Nachtlied" from the German

"I'm waiting for a man from Tijuana...!"
-Motoko - and yes, there is a perfectly innocent explanation!

"You threw my nuts on the ground!"
-Max - and I had just brushed trail mix off his hand, so don't even go there, ya perv!!

"Ich habe drei Schlittschuhe!"
-Aldo J. Alcalá

Don: I'll go see if he's in the men's room.
Merja: With his kantele?!
(Bit of conversation between Don Armistead and Merja Soria, while looking for Holland Michael just before the Finnish Ensemble concert.)

"We'll set it in Arcadia, which is the pre-classical woods where nymphs and satyrs ran around and chased each other."
-TDS on early baroque opera

"You've got me all wrong, that is not what I'm about!"
-Aldo, after being asked to write dirty e-mails

"Give me some thigh-high boots and a German accent and I'm set!"
-Aldo, brandishing a red whip

"Oh yeah, just slide into me!"
-me, to Aldo after nearly being thrown over by him sliding backwards down a bannister.

"Excuse me, dishy dish, can you stand there artsily?"
-Nessa, telling me how I should approach my crush object with a camera :)

"If I were a totally different person, would you like me?"
-Rob, to Ashley.... long story I guess!

"I'm wired on lemonade!"
-Erin Wagner, aka Eirn, really late one night while I was driving five people through the streets of Los Angeles.

"I'm just choffing to your backs!"
-Mary Sullivan, accusing me and Virginia of ignoring her onstage

"Are they women yet?"
-Gregorio Gonzales, baritone supreme, on the subject of the two mezzos we had playing trouser and female roles in opera

"You guys are the Village People..."
-Kellie Evans-O'Connor - we *think* she meant to say villagers or townspeople...

"GREG!!!!! Are you wearing my apron?"
-Holland J. Michael

"It's all I have! I've got brains and I've got boobs. And boobs are easier to display."
-me, on my rather cleavage-revealing costume

"It's time for puerile hand noises."
-Tony, at the cast party.

"And now for porno hand noises."
-Tony, a minute or so later - I blame Maria for this one.

"You sound like someone from North Park!"
-Motoko - I think she meant South Park :)

"I like it in the dark - with the lights on!"
-Aldo's response to the disco song "How Do You Like It?"

"I don't know how he achieves that nappy look!"
-Aldo, commenting on an anonymous person's hair (hint: it's a jazz guitarist)

"Music is a whore, I'm sorry to say."
-TDS, on how music is used to manipulate, for instance through advertising.

"That was when I was still a real performer, before I became a cute little professor."
-anonymous dude with a doctorate who plays the clarinet, recorder, gamba, mbira, and most regrettably enjoys the gamelan

"You're all scotch-and-soda drinkers - not a hint of tonic anywhere."
-TDS on how we handle our fugue subjects.

"What do you think I am, weird?"
-Dr. Lewis E. Peterman - I'm not gonna answer this one!

"Are you putting me in quotation marks?"
-Need I even tell you who? Hint: a cute little professor :)

"Take two, they're for children younger than you!"
-Aldo's mom, trying to medicate him with children's Benadryl.

"I know all the tricks of the trade - in theory, at least! It's like Communism, it may or may not work."
-Aldo, talking about sex

"By the way, the water from that fountain over there is much better...."
-I can't tell you who said that, but he's hella cute!

"This stuff is so nasty, we're talking Limburger!"
-Andrea Hakari, talking about really cheesy church choir music

"Hi, my name's Hugo Wolf, and I write show tunes, I guess..."
-Max, on what would have happened if they'd had Prozac in the 19th century

"I like the Wolfs, Hugo and Christa"
-me. I have just always wanted to say that -- extra points if you actually get it!

"You're defective."
-Adrienne Easton, to some motorist who had just cut us off on that nasty freeway merge

Me: Maybe you need to lower your standards a bit.
Aldo: what standards?!
(Bit of conversation about finding the ideal person.)

"Booty call, my ass!"
-Aldo, who else?

"I was up all night with these women, filking!"
-me again, about the King Of Spain filk we performed at WhoserCon 2.0

"I'm beyond bitter, I'm fermented!"
-Aldo (do I ever quote anyone else?)

"Da ist der Pferd, den brauchste."
-my brother Sven, aged 2 1/2 at the time, on playing chess (yes, this is a very old quote, I just didn't think to put it up until now)

"My dreams are stimulating, but not interactive."
-yeah, so it's another Aldo quote. Maybe I should make a page called aldoquotes.html

"Go away! You're not allowed into my private reverie!"
-yet another Aldo quote (this one was about watching him in /query over his shoulder)

"That is so geeky!"
-Ben Hutchings on the song "Why does the sun shine?" by TMBG (particularly rich considering who said it...)

"Oh my God, It's Ingo Metzmacher!"
-Aldo, out of nowhere. It just seemed very quotable.

"And all the singers rushed backwards into the flames of hell."
-Dr. Chase, whilst rehearsing Hindemith's "Apparebit repentina dies" - turns out he meant "sinners" (not that there's much difference *g*).

"I'd call you God, but that would be blasphemous and naughty ;-)"
-Andrea Hakari (theologian-in-training), on me being so omnipresent as to convince her to colour her hair.

"No-one else makes noise, since I don't care about them ;-)"
-Ben, about alerts on Instant Messenger. (Honest!)

"Oh my God, I can speak Swedish!"
(one of the running jokes of our holiday in Napa)

"This is when we have to get the women off."
-Dr. Chase -- he *meant* we were supposed to leave the stage...

"I don't get anything interesting out of my name. A lot of strange things about an umbrella."
-Laura, on anagrams

"My name is Mrs. Doyle?!"
-Anne (our favourite French grad student), after being informed of this fact, since our group in class is the cast of Father Ted (I'm Father Jack FWIW).

"The sopranos are always the ones who are most exposed..." (Cue snickering from the third row of the soprano section; gee, I wonder who that was.) "I'm not following that."
-Dr. Chase, talking about choral texture.

"Everything I know about goats is from experience."
-K (he who glowers) (This was a perfectly innocent statement, I might add. -N)

"y'know, Winamp always makes very pretty patterns from your singing :-)"
-Matt - not actually incriminating, rather more from the surreal-but-sweet compliments department

"Nice curtains! Wanna see them from another angle?"
-random bad pickup line I thought up after the conversation in #speccy turned to the Lurkcam and Dave's curtains

"We could just do it standing up."
-The Delectable Kate, talking about standing and singing behind the pews at the Messiah Sing instead of finding a place to sit

"Lancashire, but of course it's pronounced Lsh."
-Evbob

"My wrist is sore because the bellows are leaky."
-the incomparable Katherine, talking about an accordion (really)

"May I say you make a perfect sine wave"
-Another one for the surreal-but-sweet compliments department, this one from Zub (aka Stuart Brady)

"nattie does full validation on the input stream. or something."
-Zub, about my subconsciously error-correcting something he had typo'ed

"Oh no, you'll give me friction burns again!"
-Adam. There is really no way to explain this in a way that doesn't make it sound dodgy, but it was really perfectly innocent.

"I'd prefer something unaccompanied because it doesn't involve instruments."
-The admirable and adorable Lewis, after the Tenebrae service on Good Friday

"Warum ist alles in Englisch?"
-my brother Sven, now aged 12, visiting here from Germany and reading a brochure

"Don't swallow that; half of it has been in my mouth."
-Tony the alto, about some chocolate.

"You don't need to arrange your food in alphabetical order before you eat it."
-Ben

"What day of the week is Saturday?"
-me. I meant what day of the month.

"Oh, it's a café? Oh, right, yes, I remember buying some books there."
-Isa. This makes perfect sense when you're talking to her.

"It's very embarassing, having to tell a priest you've left your trousers in his church."
-the lovely Isa. There is in fact a perfectly innocent explanation.

"I think you should have a male beauty contest. Beauty. Talent. And then Debian."
-Christina DG