Love Quote by Cab Calloway

Opera gets deflated here the way Calloway could puncture a pompous room with a single eyebrow. "What opera isn't violent?" isn’t a sincere question; it’s a trapdoor. He invites you to run through your mental Rolodex of arias and plotlines, then slams it shut with the punchline logic of a bandstand comedian: violence, love, and... try naming a third thing. You can’t. The joke works because it’s basically true, and because it exposes how high culture often sells itself as refined while trafficking in the same primal spectacle as any nightclub floor show.

Calloway’s intent is less to mock opera’s music than to strip its prestige down to its engines. Opera is marketed as elevated, but its stories are blunt: jealousy, murder, betrayal, obsession. By reducing the genre to two recurring impulses, he reveals a kind of cultural hypocrisy: audiences will tolerate extreme melodrama if it’s sung in Italian and framed by velvet seats. The rhythm of the line matters, too. The clipped inventory ("Two things happen") sets up a tidy thesis, then the abrupt "You can’t" delivers the punch like a rimshot.

Context sharpens the edge. Calloway navigated a segregated America where jazz was treated as entertainment while opera was treated as Art. His quip flips that hierarchy, implying the difference isn’t moral or intellectual; it’s branding. Opera’s body count just wears better clothes.