Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.