I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.

You may have the universe if I may have Italy

They were all churning out operas of mine. It was clearly impossible for me to work under such conditions, so I hired the organs from their owners. It will cost me about 1,500 lire for the summer, but that is not too large a price to pay for peace.

In that way I can be quite certain of not making any mistakes,

Can you imagine what most conductors would do if I wrote one?