Catholics From Italy

"In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things."

"As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully."

"Every day I remind myself of all that I have been given. … With singing, you never know when you are going to lose the voice, and that makes you appreciate the time that you have when you are still singing well. I am always thanking God for another season, another month, another performance."

"I am a very simple person. In spite of all that has happened to me, I have tried to remain the simple person I started out."

"If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them."

"Penso che una vita per la musica sia una vita spesa bene ed è a questo che mi sono dedicato."

"I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it's me. You don't confuse my voice with another voice."

"I remember when I began singing, in 1961, one person said, "run quick, because opera is going to have at maximum 10 years of life." At the time it was really going down. But then, I was lucky enough to make the first Live From the Met telecast. And the day after, people stopped me on the street. So I realized the importance of bringing opera to the masses. I think there were people who didn't know what opera was before. And they say "Bohème", and of course "Bohème is so good.""

"I'm not a politician, I'm a musician. I care about giving people a place where they can go to enjoy themselves and to begin to live again. To the man you have to give the spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything."

"I had the pleasure of not only performing for him in tribute, but performing in his stead at the Grammy Awards in 1998, singing 'Nessun Dorma.' I had one magnificent and absolute and defining moment when he came to the stage to thank me for my performance. The world has lost one of the greatest voices of all time."

"I always admired the God-given glory of his voice — that unmistakable special timbre from the bottom up to the very top of the tenor range. … I also loved his wonderful sense of humor."

"He was always helpful to me, supporting me in my very difficult moments as well, due also to a severe illness. He was very close to me, he was calling me quite often and giving me a lot of support and putting me in the right spirit."

"Some can sing opera, Luciano Pavarotti was an opera. No one could inhabit those acrobatic melodies and words like him. He lived the songs, his opera was a great mash of joy and sadness; surreal and earthy at the same time; a great volcano of a man who sang fire but spilled over with a love of life in all its complexity, a great and generous friend. … I spoke to him last week... the voice that was louder than any rock band was a whisper. Still he communicated his love. Full of love. That's what people don't understand about Luciano Pavarotti. Even when the voice was dimmed in power, his interpretive skills left him a giant among a few tall men."

"The whole world will be listening today to his voice on every radio and television station, and that will continue. And that is his legacy. He will never stop,"

"Pavarotti made a profound contribution not only to music and the arts, but also to people in need around the world. His work for children — particularly those affected by armed conflict — stretched from Afghanistan to Liberia and beyond. By staging concerts and marshaling talented friends to help raise funds, he generated millions of dollars for humanitarian aid."

"Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ (Matt 16:24; Luke 9:23); discipline your body (1 Cor 9:27); do not pamper yourself, but love fasting. You must relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick (Matt 25:36), and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing. Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else."

"There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence."

"Every age and degree of understanding should have its proper measure of discipline. With regard to boys and adolescents, therefore, or those who cannot understand the seriousness of the penalty of excommunication, whenever such as these are delinquent let them be subjected to severe fasts or brought to terms by harsh beatings, that they may be cured."

"Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience."

"Dal sonno alla morte è un picciol varco."

"No man in the world was ever born with a greater genius and more qualified for epic poetry."

"I found that I had an affinity with writers like Ariosto and Tasso, at least to the extent of loving their poetry. (“Those allegories of Ariosto and Tasso were in some ways very futuristic with those fantastic voyages-they were almost like science fiction without the science.”) Of course they didn't really have science to use. But they had a similarly disciplined imagination."

"The most excellent of modern poets, ... whom I reverence next to Virgil."

"The day of fortune is like a harvest day, We must be busy when the corn is ripe."

"It is the fortunate who should extol fortune."

"Fortune rarely accompanies anyone to the door."

"Cogliam d'Amor la rosa: amiamo or quando Esser si puote riamato amando."

"Deh mira (egli cantò) spuntar la rosa Dal verde suo modesta e verginella; Che mezzo aperta ancora, e mezzo ascosa, Quanto si mostra men, tanto è più bella. Ecco poi nudo il sen già baldanzosa Dispiega: ecco poi langue, e non par quella, Quella non par che desiata innanti Fu da mille donzelle e mille amanti.'Così trapassa al trapassar d'un giorno Della vita mortale il fiore, e 'l verde: Nè, perchè faccia indietro April ritorno, Si rinfiora ella mai, nè si rinverde."

"Giace l'alta Cartago; appena i segni Dell'alte sue ruine il lido serba. Muojono le città, muojono i regni; Copre i fasti e le pompe arena ed erba; E l'uomo d'esser mortal par che si sdegni: O nostra mente cupida e superba!"

"Chè sovente addivien che 'l saggio e 'l forte Fabbro a se stesso è di beata sorte."

"Ha sotto i piedi il Fato e la Natura, Ministri umíli, e 'l moto, e chi 'l misura."

"Chè 'n parte troppo cupa, e troppo interna Il pensier de' mortali occulto giace."

"Chè nel mondo mutabile e leggiero, Costanza è spesso il variar pensiero."

"Chi la pace non vuol, la guerra s' abbia."

"Ei che modesto è sì, com'essa è bella, Brama assai, poco spera, e nulla chiede."

"Canto l'arme pietose e 'l capitano che 'l gran sepolcro liberò di Cristo."

"Perduto è tutto il tempo Che in amar non si spende."

"Vaghe Ninfe del Po, Ninfe sorelle, E voi de' boschi e voi d'onda marina E voi de' fonti e de l'alpestri cime."

"In every thing Titian's art was similar to nature. Milk feeds his babes; he weaves the stuffs; by him the arms are wrought. He transfers the trees, the hills, and plains to his picture; his animals have but just issued from the ark; and his joy or grief are alike infectious. So long as Nature lives Titian will also live. He was the very mirror of nature, only that the mirror reflects whilst Titian creates."

"There are three Venetians that are never separated in my mind — Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret."

"Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject. ... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause."

"I had not thought that I was doing wrong; I had never taken so many things into consideration."

"I paint my pictures with all the considerations which are natural to my intelligence, and according as my intelligence understands them."

"We painters use the same license as poets and madmen."

"Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject.. ..It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause."

"Titian's preferred painting ground was of a red color, and in instances where he did not employ a light , his paintings suffered considerable darkening. Titian never painted directly on the white ground and his paintings... apparently do not carry a multi-colored but rather a neutral underpainting. Glazings on Titian's paintings are not abundant. Only in instances when a color, such as madder lake or , did not lend itself to another application were glazes used. However... glazes might have been removed from some... paintings... during the many cleanings... [I]t is probable that the use of nut oil, which was favored by Italian painters of his time, was responsible for the embrittlement of the paint film. might also have contributed to the darkening... I disagree with those who assert that Titian and El Greco painted on a underpainting."

"Among the Renaissance masters, Titian, after he free himself from the influence of his teacher, , was perhaps the most nearly akin to us in his conception of oil painting. This kinship is... objectified... in the freedom of his brush stroke, the broad treatment of details, and the lack of attention to non-essential paraphernalia. Also, the conscious use of tonal values—i.e., variations of the same color—... contrasts with the coloristic ideas of the painters who used their colors with little tonal graduation. Another important characteristic... is the fuzzy, blurred appearance of the contour, which is not unlike the... Impressionists. Only the brownish patina... and the absence of certain color combinations in which we delight today, make them look different from our own paintings."

"This is to show the world that I can paint like Titian. [A big drawing of a rectangle] Only technical details are missing."

"Titian's supremacy above all the other Venetians, except Tintoret[to] and Veronese, consists in the firm truth of his portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint; so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator, Titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and unappealing to him."

"Thus, Titian is not soft enough for the sensualist, —Correggio suits him better; Titian is not defined enough for the formalist, —Leonardo suits him better; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist, —Raphael suits him better; Titian is not polite enough for the man of the world, —Vandyke suits him him better; Titian is not forcible enough for the lover of the picturesque, —Rembrandt suits him better."