Music with Ease > Opera > Opera Quotes > Charles Gounod Quotes

Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them.
-- Gounod, speaking of his period in Provence, 1863, quoted in J Harding, Gounod (1973)

My humiliating profession of decomposer of music.
Gounod, speaking of the demands for changes to his opera, Mireille, quoted in J Harding, Gounod (1973)

I fight against the void. I think I've written something acceptable, and then, when I look at it again, I find it execrable.
Gounod, 1870, quoted in J Harding, Gounod (1973)

To be a great artist is not necessarily to be an honorable man.
-- Georges Bizet, referring to Gounod, quoted in W Dean, Bizet (1975)

You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I sprang from you, You are the cause and I am the consequence.
-- Georges Bizet, letter to Gounod, 1872


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Quotable Opera: Aria Ready for a Laugh?

What they said when they were not singing.

Here are hundreds of quotes that highlight the wit, wisdom and lunacy of the opera world. Luminaries Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Caruso, Ruffo, Chaliapin, Melba, Sills, Callas, Toscanini, Beecham and other more recent personalities have had lots to say about opera, themselves and each other.

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This book will be a delight for aficionados of opera.

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