Gian Carlo Menotti Quotes

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I loathe my body. The liver spots, the sagging flesh.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I have a heart problem, so I have to simplify my life and be content with memories and friends and music.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I thought conceptual art was a joke.

- 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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

My advice to composers is, 'Try to reach 90, and everyone will love you.'

- Gian Carlo Menotti

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

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.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I'm not very sympathetic to the tendency to bring art to the people.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I can sit on a chair with a score and give myself a wonderful performance.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

Fate has blessed me.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I guess I am running the risk of becoming the Hans Christian Andersen of opera.

- Gian Carlo Menotti

I have always felt that art, especially music, is but a demonstration of God.

- Gian Carlo Menotti