Giuseppe Verdi Quotes

#1. A man like Verdi must write like Verdi.

Giuseppe Verdi

#2. Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise.

Giuseppe Verdi

#3. You may have the universe if I may have Italy

Giuseppe Verdi

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

Giuseppe Verdi

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

Giuseppe Verdi

#6. It is better to invert reality than to copy it.

Giuseppe Verdi

#7. 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

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

Giuseppe Verdi

#9. 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

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

Giuseppe Verdi

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

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

Giuseppe Verdi

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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