Top 9 Rossini Quotes & Sayings

After Rossini dies, who will be there to promote his music?

The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed - a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight.

I concentrated on Rossini when I began, and I never really felt any competition. I sang in the best houses, and I believed I was always a first choice. I was lucky in a way - I never felt there was someone else who was getting the roles in another theatre and that we were competing.

Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi, people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.

It's a dream come true, and with this music, with this Rossini, it's unbelievable how to express the joy and express the joy of the situation and the joy to play this music, to sing this music, it's really fantastic.

Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the most beautiful, Rossini the most brilliant, but Bach is the most comprehensive: he has said all there is to say.

Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.

The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.

I'm from Italy, the home of Vivaldi, Rossini, Puccini. When I stopped playing and became a manager, football became like a beautiful piece of music to me - and the players, an orchestra.