Creativity Quote by Victoria de los Angeles

The charm here is that it reads like a singer thinking out loud while batting away a lazy comparison. De los Angeles is talking about “doing German” - repertory, diction, a whole aesthetic world - and her syntax (slightly tangled, urgent, defensive) actually reinforces the point: intention matters more than polish. She’s refusing the premise that language equals identity, that choosing German Lieder means cosplaying as “a German singer.” In a classical music culture that loves tidy national boxes (Italianate warmth, German seriousness, French perfume), she insists on artistic agency over branding.

There’s also a subtle politics of legitimacy. For non-German singers, especially in the mid-20th century, German repertoire could come with an implied test: can you sound “authentically” German enough to be taken seriously? De los Angeles sidesteps that trap. She doesn’t argue she can imitate Germanness; she argues she doesn’t need to. The subtext is a critique of gatekeeping disguised as taste.

At the same time, it’s an argument for translation without erasure: you can inhabit another language’s music without surrendering your own voice, accent, or temperament. The line “Victoria de los Angeles is nothing to do with wanting to be like a German singer” sounds almost like she’s pointing to her name as proof: her identity is already a statement, and it doesn’t require conversion. What’s being defended isn’t just repertoire choice, but the right to interpret across borders without being recast as an imitation.