Gian Carlo Menotti quotes

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian composer and librettist renowned for his operas. Many of his works, such as "The Consul" and "Amahl and the Night Visitors," gained international acclaim and brought opera to a wider audience. He also founded the Festival dei Due Mondi, greatly influencing the world of contemporary music and theater. Here are 8 of his quotes:

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

Gian Carlo Menotti

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

Gian Carlo Menotti

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

Gian Carlo Menotti

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

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

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

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