I never step upon a stage without asking myself whether I will succeed in finishing the opera. The fact is that a conscientious singer is never sure of himself or of anything. He is ever in the hands of Destiny.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the uncertainty and pressure artists face before performing.
Enrico Caruso expresses the inherent anxiety that comes with being a performer, particularly the fear of not delivering a successful performance. He acknowledges that no matter how experienced an artist may be, the outcome is ultimately unpredictable and reliant on various external factors, hinting at the interplay between talent and fate in the world of art.
In practice
During a speech at a performing arts festival.
To become a singer requires work, work, and again, work! It need not be in any special corner of the earth; there is no one spot that will do more for you than other places. It doesn't matter so much where you are if you have intelligence and a good ear.
It is too bad that the public expects from me, always, perfection which it is impossible for me always to attain. I am not a machine. I am a human being.
It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.
I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes.
I think Mozart's operas 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Don Giovanni' are the two most perfect ever written. The music is magical.
At a certain place in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, he might feel that he is floating above the earth in a starry dome, with the dream of immortality in his heart; all the stars seem to glimmer around him, and the earth seems to sink ever deeper downwards.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born.
Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.
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