Giuseppe Verdi Quotations

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.

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.

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.

They were all churning out operas of mine. It was clearly impossible for me to work under such conditions, so I hired the organs from their owners. It will cost me about 1,500 lire for the summer, but that is not too large a price to pay for peace.

In that way I can be quite certain of not making any mistakes,

Can you imagine what most conductors would do if I wrote one?

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.

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.

Oh, you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you!

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.

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.

Oh blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.

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.

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.

A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.

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 stupid

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.

It may be a good thing to copy reality; but to invent reality is much, much better.

It is better to invert reality than to copy it.

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

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.

I have striven for perfection, it has always eluded me, but I surely had an obligation to make one more try.