‘That my present stage-work is a legend and not a comic opera is to many a matter of surprise; yes, it can be that many people think I am attempting here territory that is new to me. Whoever knows my choral work La vita nuova that I wrote 25 years ago, will know otherwise. I was then surprised myself that, barely a year after La vita nuova, I started to write Le donne curiose, a comic opera. Today I am not surprised, since I now know much that I did not know then. Strictly speaking, every man, seen from outside, is a comic figure, and inside is a tragic one …’

– Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
21 April 1927
on the premiere of Das Himmelskleid