Any great work of art . . . revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Source: What Makes Opera Grand?, in Vogue, Dec 1958.
-- Leonard Bernstein, (Aug 25 1918-1990), US composer, conductor; He was the immensely popular conductor of the N.Y. Philharmonic and best known for West Side Story, 1957.