Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.
Gian Carlo Menotti
Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.
A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.
I thought conceptual art was a joke.
Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.
I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.
I can sit on a chair with a score and give myself a wonderful performance.
Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.
For better or for worse, in 'The Last Savage,' I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.
I have a heart problem, so I have to simplify my life and be content with memories and friends and music.
My advice to composers is, 'Try to reach 90, and everyone will love you.'
I guess I am running the risk of becoming the Hans Christian Andersen of opera.
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.
There are three reasons why I live in Scotland. First, I like silence, and you have to be a millionaire to buy silence in Italy. Second, I like cold weather. Third, in Italy I have too many relatives and know too many people, so I never get a quiet time.
The Italians are very unmusical. If I go to a Protestant church in London or Amsterdam or listen to a black choir, I hear four-part harmony. Italians could never do that. In Italy, we all have to sing the melody because we cannot harmonise.
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.
I loathe my body. The liver spots, the sagging flesh.
One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'
Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.
God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.
I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.
It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.
I have always felt that art, especially music, is but a demonstration of God.
A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.
I have the feeling that everybody was waiting for me to die so they could rediscover me. Then they found out I'm not dead yet, so they are rediscovering me while I'm still alive.
As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked.
At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.
Fate has blessed me.
I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.
It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.
Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.
The Greeks said the artist doesn't actually have to travel and look around. You stay where God has put you, and you dig as deep as you can. This is what I've done.
I'm not very sympathetic to the tendency to bring art to the people.
It's always what you did before. The year before is always so much better. Even when the critics hated what you did then, it always looks better five years later.
The creation of Spoleto was a social experiment. Because I've always suffered guilt from being a Catholic, when I was in my fifties I felt a need of being needed.
