Quotes & Sayings About Verdi

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

I love music, especially classical like Verdi; it's a great way to relax. — David Suchet

Perhaps dirt is the necessary condition of beauty ... Perhaps hygiene and art can never be bedfellows. No Verdi, after all, without spitting into trumpets. No Duse without a crowd of malodorous bourgeois giving one another their coryzas. And think of the inexpugnable retreats for microbes prepared by Michelangelo in the curls of Moses' beard! — Aldous Huxley

What's unfortunate about buying a pitcher for $12 million is that he carries no warranty. — Bob Verdi

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

She's sweet on Wagner.
I think she'd die for Beethoven.
she loves the way Puccini lays down a tune,
and Verdi's always creeping from her room. — Electric Light Orchestra

Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi, people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television. — Luciano Berio

Put to death? I thought God was supposed to be all about forgiveness, not the death penalty. — Jessica Verdi

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?
But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit. — Jessica Verdi

It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge. — James Levine

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though. — Rufus Wainwright

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. — Rufus Wainwright

If New Horizons is, like Kaylee said, the tool God gave me to create a better life, I'm pretty sure I'm using it wrong. — Jessica Verdi

If it really was Queen Elizabeth who demanded to see Falstaff in a comedy, then she showed herself a very perceptive critic. But even in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff has not and could not have found his true home because Shakespeare was only a poet. For that he was to wait nearly two hundred years till Verdi wrote his last opera. Falstaff is not the only case of a character whose true home is the world of music; others are Tristan, Isolde and Don Giovanni. — W. H. Auden

Finding someone you can really connect with is like winning the lottery
It happens basically never, but if it does, you really shouldn't blow it. — Jessica Verdi

I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe. — Rufus Wainwright

This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli's hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists. — Adriana Trigiani

When is it too late to say it's still early for the Cubs? Try now. Their magic number is 1998, at least until it becomes 1999, but in lieu of a present, they offer you a future. — Bob Verdi

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone. — Mary Oliver

I don't know how long it's been since I've been gone, but you have to move on. If not today, then someday soon.
I love you, Ryden, I will always love you, but I'm not here anymore. — Jessica Verdi

After I turn 50, I would like to sing Verdi's 'Attila.' — Sondra Radvanovsky

But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; — Arthur C. Clarke

I didn't want this man touching me in those places. It wasn't that he was being inappropriate, it was just more that he obviously didn't view me as a person, let alone a scared person with actual feelings. He just saw me as yet another scientific specimen there for his own experimenting. I squeezed my eyes shut, cringing the entire time. — Jessica Verdi

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers. — Benjamin Britten

The truth was, I had never felt sad about being gay. It was just another part of who I was, no different than my size seven feet or 20/20 vision. The part I hated was the hiding; the pretending to be someone I wasn't; the steady, tormenting harassment that came in the form of Bible scripture and church sermons, the constant fear that if people found out, they would hate me, ridicule me, possibly even hurt me. That stuff sucked. — Jessica Verdi

I'd never wanted to punch anyone as badly as I wanted to punch her right in her perfectly little surgically-altered nose. — Jessica Verdi

Verdi was a genius. Sometimes in his operas, the strings in the orchestra, particularly the cellos, play in such a way that it is as if you are hearing the very heartbeat of Verdi. — Vincent B. "Chip" LoCoco

That's the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I'm in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can't enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we're going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death. — Jessica Verdi

The bell that tolls for all in boxing belongs to a cash register. — Bob Verdi

Why does everything have to suck so bad? Even when you think it's getting better, it's not. Life's building up suckiness, getting ready to hit you again, at the worst possible moment. — Jessica Verdi

Leaping and looping with his little striped friends, verdi laughed and said "I may be big and very green, but I'm still me! — Janell Cannon

What if the only thing that's standing between us right now is our fear? — Jessica Verdi

Even Stravinsky does not evoke the same public affection as Verdi. — Charles Rosen

So you're a real person! I always thought you were a legendary figure, like unicorns or Giuseppe Verdi. — Lemony Snicket

Now I know thinking is not your strong suit, but look on the bright side, at least you'll have this little puzzler to keep you occupied for the next hour or so. — Jessica Verdi

There's something about New York City that gives you permission to just be. There's no need for pretense, no need for masks. You can be real, without risk. The buildings are your protectors, the streets are your tethers. The people ... you will never see them again. Even when they're right in front of you, you don't see them. Not really. Just as they don't really see you. New York is beautifully anonymous. — Jessica Verdi

It is better to invert reality than to copy it. — 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. — Giuseppe Verdi

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel. — Jonny Greenwood

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

I checked my phone again one more time before crawling into bed, fully aware that Einstein's definition of insanity was repeating the same action over and expecting different results. — Jessica Verdi

If there's anything worth any risk at all, it's got to be love, right? — Jessica Verdi

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

A singer whose ear is singly directed to the melodic aspects of a Brahms lied or a Verdi aria lacks perception of the musical web from which the melodic line emerges; the composer's intent may remain unrealized. to sing Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, or Strauss lieder without an understanding of underlying harmonic structures is to vocalize on them, not to conceive of them musically and emotionally. — Richard Miller

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 — Giuseppe Verdi

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

I want you to know how I feel about my Italian heritage, so I'd like to say a few words in Italian: Verdi, Pavarotti, DiMaggio, Valentino, De Niro, Giuliani ... — Susan Lucci

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

Sounds like a pretty miserable existence to me, to have to keep denying who you are every second of your life. — Jessica Verdi

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

You may have the universe if I may have Italy — Giuseppe Verdi

See, that's the problem with getting hit by lightning. You get burned. — Jessica Verdi

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

I felt entirely invisible and uncomfortably obvious all at the same time, sitting there in practically nothing in front of this stranger who was ignoring me. — Jessica Verdi

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. — Giuseppe Verdi

The only thing that interests me in music is to be able to reach into the, let's call it, 'collective unconscious' of what is noblest in the human spirit, the way you find in the music of Mozart and Beethoven and Verdi that wonderful quality that not a note can be changed. — Gian Carlo Menotti

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

Show pity I beg you ...
We have today been struck down by fortune
But tomorrow it may be your own turn to die. — Giuseppe Verdi

The thing they don't tell you in sex education classes is what to do after. It's all, "Don't do this, don't do that. And if you do do this or that, make sure you do it safely." But what about when you screw up? Then what? Where do you go? Who do you tell? How do you act? Sex "education" prepares you for nothing. — Jessica Verdi

It heartens me to think of Verdi who composed thundering operas in his eighties; Michelangelo who did fine work in his ninetieth year, and Titian, who painted better than ever in his one hundredth. — James A. Michener

A man like Verdi must write like Verdi. — Giuseppe Verdi

The activity for the day is Avoiding Satanic Influences — Jessica Verdi

...this is your life. It's not your mom's. You have to do what makes you happy too — Jessica Verdi

Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise. — Giuseppe Verdi

You can't pray the gay away. — Jessica Verdi

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time. — Rufus Wainwright