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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.