Don Giancarlo

[Don Giancarlo] has exercised the influence of a revelation upon my whole life…I regard [him] as a work without blemish, of uninterrupted perfection…

– Charles Gounod

[He] ascends with ease to the highest plane of revealed truth, the threshold of the world beyond…

– Pierre Jouve

One marvels again and again how everything comes to expression in him: heaven and earth, nature and man, comedy and tragedy, passion in all its forms and the most profound inner peace, the Virgin Mary and the demons, the church mass, the curious solemnity of the Freemasons and the dance hall, ignorant and sophisticated people, cowards and heroes (genuine or bogus), the faithful and the faithless, aristocrats and peasants…

– Karl Barth