The money in the chorus isn’t very good, is it?!” she said.“No.” It was less than you’d get for scrubbing floors. The reason was that, when you advertised a dirty floor, hundreds of hopefuls didn’t turn up.

If music were the food of love, she was game for a sonata and chips at any time.

Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man.

The Departure Aria, a very important and romantic song - This damn door sticks,This damn door sticksIt sticks no matter what I do.It is marked 'pull' and indeed I am pullingPerhaps it should be marked 'push'?

The remainder of the opera passed without anyone dying, except where the score required them to do so at some length.

The chorus was filing on to be A Busy Marketplace, in which various jugglers, gypsies, sword swallowers and gaily dressed yokels would be entirely unsurprised at an apparently drunken baritone strolling on to sing an enormous amount of plot at a passing tenor.