Can Maven be made less verbose?

You can try the -q switch.

-q,--quiet Quiet output - only show errors

-q as said above is what you need. An alternative could be:

-B,--batch-mode Run in non-interactive (batch) mode Batch mode is essential if you need to run Maven in a non-interactive, continuous integration environment. When running in non-interactive mode, Maven will never stop to accept input from the user. Instead, it will use sensible default values when it requires input.

And will also reduce the output messages more or less to the essentials.