Verdi Quotes

• 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

  Mother, Home, Self

  4 Copy quote

• I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.

  Werner Herzog

  Iceland, Choices, Feelings

  Source: www.rogerebert.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Music, Arrogant, Faults

  Benjamin Britten, Paul Francis Kildea (2003). “On Music”, p.103, Oxford University Press, USA

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A whole new world of Italian music was springing up, and [Giuseppe] Verdi was seen as old. Boito got Verdi all excited about the possibility of doing another opera, another kind of opera. In fact, Verdi composed his two best operas, Otello and Falstaff, in his eighties.

  Maurice Sendak

  Italian, Two, Opera

  Source: www.hbook.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had been reading a fabulous book [The Man Verdi, by Frank Walker] about [Giuseppe] Verdi, whom I adore.

  Maurice Sendak

  Reading, Book, Men

  Source: www.hbook.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Religious, Theatre, Opera

  "Rufus Wainwright on Passion, Opera and Taking Care of the Earth". Interview with Kristi York Wooten, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. May 1, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

  Maurice Sendak

  Writing, Age, Want

  Source: www.hbook.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like to sing to Verdi, I like singing to Sibelius, and Mahler maybe.

  Rufus Wainwright

  Singing, Mahler, Sibelius

  "Crystal clear". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tom [Courtenay] and Albert Finney met Ron Harwood on the dresser, so that's how it started. It's a wonderful documentary. It's called Tosca's Kiss and Mr Hardwood told me about it when I asked him what the genesis was. It was made in 1983 and Verdi, who was rich and successful, toward the end of his life decided to build a mansion for himself in Milan, where he lived, and he stipulated that when he died opera singers and musicians - because he knew so many who were no longer playing at the Scala and some were poor - could live there.

  Dustin Hoffman

  Successful, Kissing, Musician

  "Quartet - Dustin Hoffman interview". Press conference, www.indielondon.co.uk.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Art, Reality, Thinking

  Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Queens, Character, Home

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Family, Italian, Pavarotti

  7 Copy quote

• A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

  Giuseppe Verdi

  Writing, Men

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

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Work, Thinking, Years

  4 Copy quote

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

  David Suchet

  Relax, Way, Music Love

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even Stravinsky does not evoke the same public affection as Verdi.

  Charles Rosen

  Doe, Affection, Evoke

  Charles Rosen (2002). “Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Hands, People, Darkness

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Music, Important, Ravel

  "Music (For A Film): Jonny Greenwood Of Radiohead Interviewed". Interview with Chris Woolfrey, thequietus.com. February 18, 2014.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Morning, Spring, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2012). “A Thousand Mornings: Poems”, p.39, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Thinking, World, Opera

  4 Copy quote