Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.

Give me the laundress' bill and I will set to music even that.

At a very early stage I realised that it's a real problem to perform electronic music on stage because electronic instruments are not particularly convincing on a visual point of view: somebody behind his computer, it's not particularly visual. So I was inspired by the opera. And what was the opera in the 19th century? It was the idea for a musician to join and to work, to collaborate with a stage director, with carpenters, painters, people doing decors, graphic artists to have a visual prolongation, a visual correspondence to their work. That's what I tried to do with the tools of my generation: electronics and video and lights and all that.

So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.

Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.

The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

It's a very similar process in many ways to doing translation, if you translate an opera or a work were the music is inflexible and the words have to go from language to another you have a similar challenge.

It will be rather sad music. It will also probably be one of my most beautiful and deepest works. I've been thinking a lot about music, and life, but particularly about music because it's only in thinking about music, and about sound, that I can be happy. [...] This piece I'm doing is an important bridge to cross before beginning the opera, technical work, obviously, a rediscovery (A) of counterpoint (B) of more dramatic musical time, closer to speech, with atomic elements of different kinds.

I am convinced that the decisive factor in dramatic effect will be a smaller orchestra, which does not drown out the human voice as does a large orchestra…The orchestra of the opera of the future is the chamber orchestra which, by painting in the background of the action on the stage with crystalline clearness, can alone realise precisely the intention of the composer with regard to the vocal parts. It is after all an important desideratum that the audience should not only hear the sounds but should also be able to follow the words closely.

The thing is I have an inexpressible desire to write an opera again; it would make me so happy because it gives me something to compose which is my real joy and passion (...).

Song of myself
Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.

I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames,
clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,
I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of
work-people at their meals,
The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,
The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing
a death-sentence,
The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the
refrain of the anchor-lifters,
The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking
engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,
The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,
(They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin.)

I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast.

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,
Ah this indeed is music — this suits me.

I will not stop singing
the Muses who set me dancing.

Datemi il conto della lavandaia e vi metterò in musica anche quello.

Play Mozart in memory of me— and I will hear you.