Lisztomania (1975)

Paul Nicholas: Richard Wagner

Photos 

Quotes 

• Richard Wagner : Is it true that when Liszt was a kid he played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata at a concert and the composer himself jumped up and kissed him?

  Rossini : Certainly Beethoven kissed the boy. By that time he was as deaf as a post.

• Richard Wagner : The trouble with your friends, Liszt, is they're all bourgeois pigs.

  Liszt : Oh, pigs if you please. But aristocratic pigs, not bourgeois.

• Richard Wagner : You are Robert Schumann?

  Strauss : No no no. That's Schumann. I am Strauss.

  Richard Wagner : Not Johann Strauss?

  Strauss : [annoyed]  No! Levi Strauss!

• Liszt : Well, we are in show business, Dickie.

  Richard Wagner : Yes! Because to you the piano is just - a harlot!

  Liszt : Yeah, and every penny owned by that harlot tonight goes to build a monument to your beloved Beethoven, which your beloved countrymen so belovedly neglected to build.

• Richard Wagner : Read this: the piano as an instrument of revolution!

• Richard Wagner : The belief that I shall write music that will fire the imagination of the German people and bring to light a man of iron to forge the shattered fragments of this country into a nation of steel. A vision you will help me realize, dear Franz.

• Richard Wagner : [singing]  His day at hand, Will drive the beast from our land, He will restore, Teutonic Godhead, The hour of the Aryan, Super Man, Is at hand.

• Richard Wagner : My sacred works I entrust to her. Through her you will perform the rituals. Through me you will serve the Super Man. You will be - the Master Race!

• Thor : Stein.

  Richard Wagner : What?

  Thor : Stein!

• Richard Wagner : Once I dreamed of revolution, Franz. I was a Communist. I believed that one day a leader would rise from the ranks of the people and lead them to freedom. Such a man does not exist. To imagine he ever could is just a foolish dream. No, Franz. We need a Super Man! Such a future will never be born, Franz. Such a creature must be - created!

• Liszt : Don't tell me you're going in for electronic music.

  Richard Wagner : German music is good enough for me! Or, will be, when we rid it of the Jews.

  Liszt : Who's gonna do that? Your Man of Iron? He's a long time coming.

• Richard Wagner : So you're the yid who only makes music on a cash register?

  Felix Mendelsohn : Music, shmusic, it's a living, dear boy.