#salzella

"Er, gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket. "Ahem. All right. Cards on the table, eh? I'm a simple man, me. No beating about the bush, speak as you find, call a spade a spade--"

"And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head."

"I don't understand! Is this man mad?"

“Good grief, man! Important? What’d I ever have achieved in the cheese business, I’d like to know, if I’d said that money wasn’t important?” “There are people out on the stage right now, sir, who’d say that you would probably have made better cheeses.”

A catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket, is what opera runs along. Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong, Mr Bucket. It works because of hatred and love and nerves. All the time. This isn't cheese. This is opera. If you wanted a quiet retirement, Mr Bucket, you shouldn't have bought the Opera House. You should have done something peaceful, like alligator dentistry.

Oh, theatre," said Salzella. "Theatre doesn't even approach it. Opera isn't theatre with singing and dancing. Opera's opera. You might  think a production like Lohenshaak is full of passion, but it's a sandpit of toddlers compared to what's going on behind the scenes. The singers all loathe the sight on one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, and dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case, and that's only the start of it, because what is really - "

Do give us your forthright views," said Salzella. Definitely that kind of owner, he thought. Self-made man proud of his handiwork. Confuses bluffness and honest with merely being rude. I Wouldn't mind betting a dollar that he thinks he can tell a man's character by testing the firmness of his handshake and looking deeply into his eyes. "I've been through the mill, I have," Bucket began, "and I made myself what I am today-" Self-raising flour? though Salzella.