In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things. ↗
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. ↗
Later on, there were some problems with our navy, so he made me the head of the navy - all things that I hardly knew anything about. I was basically an ignorant young man. ↗