Giuseppe Verdi
I adore art... when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.Collection: Alone
You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.Collection: Music
I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.Collection: Art
I have striven for perfection, it has always eluded me, but I surely had an obligation to make one more try.Collection: Perfection
The artist must yield himself to his own inspiraton, and if he has a true talent, no one knows and feels better than he what suits him.Collection: Feel Better
It is better to invert reality than to copy it.Collection: Reality
It may be a good thing to copy reality; but to invent reality is much, much better.Collection: Reality
A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.Collection: Writing
The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.Collection: Hands
Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.Collection: Stupid
The artist must yield himself to his own inspiration... I should compose with utter confidence a subject that set my musical blood going, even though it were condemned by all other artists as anti-musical.Collection: Inspiration
Oh blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.Collection: Blessed
Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music.Collection: Mean
Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.Collection: Mistake
I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.Collection: Song
Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupidCollection: Art
Oh, you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you!Collection: Son
I deny that either singers or conductors can "create" or work creatively - this, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss.Collection: Singers