A biography for Gian Carlo Menottihasn’t been written yet.
“Fate has blessed me.”
“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.”
“One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'”
“People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.”
“I thought conceptual art was a joke.”
“I have always felt that art, especially music, is but a demonstration of God.”
“Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.”
“I guess I am running the risk of becoming the Hans Christian Andersen of opera.”
“I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.”
“I'm not very sympathetic to the tendency to bring art to the people.”
“At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.”
“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.”