Giuseppe Verdi Quotes

• You may have the universe if I may have Italy.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Travel, May, Individualism

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

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Music, Creativity, Truth Is

  Giuseppe Verdi, Hans Busch (1988). “Verdi's Otello and Simon Boccanegra (revised version) in letters and documents”, Oxford University Press, USA

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

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Perfection, Trying, Obligation

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• 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

  Art, Eye, Joy

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• 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

  Feel Better, Artist, Yield

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• It is better to invert reality than to copy it.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Reality, Invert, Copies

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

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Reality, May, Good Things

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• A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Writing, Men, Verdi

  Giuseppe Verdi (2016). “Messa da Requiem: Critical Edition Study Score”, p.24, University of Chicago Press

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• 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

  Hands, Opera, Tenors

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• Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Stupid, Criticism, Praise

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• 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.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Inspiration, Artist, Yield

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

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Blessed, Solitude, Affair

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• 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

  Mean, Past, Composer

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• 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

  Mistake, Writing, Two

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• 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

  Song, Order, Funeral

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• 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

  Art, Stupid, Taken

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

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Son, Envy, Bosoms

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• 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

  Singers, Deny, Said

  Letter to Giulio Ricordi (April 11, 1871) quoted in "Giuseppe Verdi" (1959) by Franco Abbiati, Milano: Ricordi, vol. 3, (p. 448), translated by Edward Downes in "Verdi: The Man in His Letters" edited by Franz Werfel and Paul Stefan, New York: L. B. Fischer, (pp. 301-302), 1942.

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