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Verdi Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Verdi.

Verdi Quotes

“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.”

IfsWorldYearsTwoCharacterHomeLastsFoundWaitingCasesComedyWifePoetHundredCriticsQueensOperaMerryQueen ElizabethTrue HomeWindsorFalstaffVerdi
Author:W. H. Auden
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“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!”

ThinkingGivingArtRealityArtistConditionsPreparedCrowdsRealismDirtBe PreparedIdealismRetreatBeardMosesBourgeoisTrumpetsCurlsHygieneMicrobesBedfellowsVerdi
Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley
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“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.”

MadeEndsPoorSuccessfulRichWonderfulMetsKissingMusicianDecidedDiedSingersOperaTomsDocumentariesGenesisMansionsMilanOpera SingersDressersVerdiHardwood
Author:Dustin Hoffman
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“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.”

PersonsDifferentEndsSelfHomeYoungMotherCommunitySituationMassBottomFolksSexualityAidsSingersIntenseFormerDiscoveringKateHookedParentalRequiemVerdi
Author:Rufus Wainwright
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“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.”

WellsEndsEnoughSeemsNightFallVoicePoorSilenceMorningGoneToo MuchImagineTreeSkySpringSingingGratefulWoodsPassingPassingsLiftsAcceptableGlowingPassing ThroughI Am GratefulPoor LifeThrushMahlerVerdi
Book:A Thousand Mornings: Poems
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“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.”

PeopleImportantStoriesHandsTogetherSocialMoralDarknessGoneTelevisionListeningInstrumentsOperaDilemmaHolding HandsCatharsisWatching TelevisionMoral DilemmaVerdiRossini
Author:Luciano Berio
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