Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour. — Gioachino Rossini
I did not care for Wagner. My tastes are more classical. Der Fuhrer had no musical taste and liked Wagner because of the bombastic Teutonic glories. — Hans Frank
One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time. — Gioachino Rossini
Western culture is what gave us Mozart, and Da Vinci, and Wagner, and Beethoven. — Milo Yiannopoulos
A man like Verdi must write like Verdi. — Giuseppe Verdi
In Bach, Beethoven and Wagner we admire principally the depth and energy of the human mind; in Mozart, the divine instinct. — Edvard Grieg
I'm Mozart with a focus on the tide
Hiding the inconsistencies of man behind water and wine — Aesop Rock
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. — Gioachino Rossini
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. — Giuseppe Verdi
After so many maneuvers and a great many toils the opera is now ruined. — Antonio Vivaldi
Give Mozart a fairy tale and he creates without effort an immortal masterpiece. — Camille Saint-Saens
In opera, there is always too much singing. — Claude Debussy
A German singer! I should as soon expect to get pleasure from the neighing of my horse. — Frederick the Great
Short Wagner Quotes
Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds. — Richard Wagner
For me Wagner is impossible... he talks without ever stopping. One can't just talk all the time. — Robert Schumann
Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there. — Ralph Vaughan Williams
Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour. — Gioachino Rossini
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds. — Mark Twain
I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland. — Woody Allen
The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people. — Nico Muhly
...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting. — Mark Twain
They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds. — Edgar Wilson Nye
Please write music like Wagner, only louder. — Samuel Goldwyn
Richard Wagner Quotes
What terrible harm Wagner did by interspersing his pages of genius with harmonic and modulatory outrages to which both young and old are gradually becoming accustomed and which have procreated d'Indy and Richard Strauss. — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country. — Ralph Vaughan Williams
Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods. — Ludwig van Beethoven
If Richard Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the 'Great Art Form' would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about. — Harmony Korine
I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees. — Leonard Bernstein
Maybe this is why so many serial killers work in pairs. It's nice not to feel alone in a world full of victims or enemies. It's no wonder Waltraud Wagner, the Austrian Angel of Death, convinced her friends to kill with her. It just seems natural. You and me against the world. — Chuck Palahniuk
The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration. — Ernest Newman
Renaissance cowboy/raconteur Pop Wagner ...deadpan funny ...his presence is like meeting Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers riding a single, many colored horse. Pop is a kind of 'textile genius' who is able to spin, at once, both yarn and rope. — Ron Miles
If one has not heard Wagner at Bayreuth, one has heard nothing! Take lots of handkerchiefs because you will cry a great deal! Also take a sedative because you will be exalted to the point of delirium! — Gabriel Faure
I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill. — Franz Liszt
Sometimes I have the feeling that you are not quite aware--and this honors you--of the historical greatness of your position, that you think too modestly about yourself. Everything you do is destined to be of historic significance. One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind, like those of Wagner and Brahms. — Stefan Zweig
I love Italian opera -- it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate. — D. H. Lawrence
Up to the age of 14 I had not heard a note of anything before 1750, never heard a note of Bach, never heard anything after Wagner, and never heard any real jazz. — Steve Reich
I cannot work and listen to Wagner at the same time, nor Mahler, nor Beethoven's late quartets. I enjoy listening to Chopin's piano music when I work. — I. M. Pei
When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing. I told him I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy. — James Surowiecki
The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence. — Philippe Aries
I wish I could write librettos for the rest of my life. It is the purest of human pleasures, a heavenly hermaphroditism of being both writer and musician. No wonder that selfish beast Wagner kept it all to himself. — Sylvia Townsend Warner
I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide. — Mark Twain
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws. — Charles Baudelaire
Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!! — Vincent Van Gogh
When I was about 19, my stepmother said - because this was back in the 80s - that I had Robert Wagners pompadour. I said, What are you talking about? You mean the guy from Hart to Hart? — Michael Weatherly
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says. — Oscar Wilde
I name (Honus) Wagner first on my list, not only because he was a great batting champion and base-runner, and also baseball's foremost shortstop, but because Honus (Wagner) could have been first at any other position, with the possible exception of pitcher. In all my career, I never saw such a versatile player. — John McGraw
Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense. — Georg Solti
I am honored to have John Lloyd called the Black Wagner. It is a privilege to have been compared with him. — Honus Wagner
I never listen to music when I am writing. It would be impossible. I listen to Bach in the mornings, mostly choral music; also some Handel, mostly songs and arias; I like Schubert's and Beethoven's chamber music and Sibelius' symphonies; for opera, I listen to Mozart and in recent years Wagner. — Colm Toibin
I grew up taking piano lessons and liking Wagner when I was in second grade. — Tom Verlaine
I felt, "Oh, film is a great art because I can pull in music and visual imagery, and it has its literary aspects and drama." Film was a sort of Wagnerian synthesis of the arts, as opposed to opera, which Wagner had thought would be. That's another art form that has seen its best days. — James Toback
Wagner festival was [Adolf Hitler] time with the Wagner family. [Eva Braun] asked once to attend but he forbade it and that was that, she never asked again. — Gretl Braun
In Conclusion
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