How can I alter the text height and width on a text?

Question

I need to fit a six page document into five pages and would like to increase the text height and perhaps the text width a bit. I used \textheight and \textwidth but to no avail. Can you help me please? Here is the code: I am leaving even the useless in case something might be the culprit. Thanks a lot.

\documentclass [a4paper, 10pt]{amsart}

\usepackage{times}

\linespread{0.5} %interlinea: 1 e 1/2
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

\baselineskip 10pt
\oddsidemargin 0pt
\evensidemargin 0pt
%\topmargin -40pt
\headheight 50pt
\headsep 10pt
\footskip 32pt
\textheight 250mm
\textwidth 190mm


\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amsthm,amssymb,amscd}
%\usepackage{makeidx}
\usepackage{graphicx, epsfig, psfrag}
\usepackage{pb-diagram}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{wasysym, auto-pst-pdf}
\usepackage{epstopdf,yfonts}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage[all]{xy}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{pdflscape}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
{\bf CURRICULUM VITAE}
\end{center}

Here it goes the text (it should be long to see whether it works)

\end{document}

Answer 1

Use this preamble:

\documentclass [a4paper, 10pt]{amsart}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{setspace}
\setstretch{0.5}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\usepackage[textheight=25 cm, textwidth=19cm, headheight=50pt, headsep=10pt, footskip=32pt]{geometry}

Note some of the packages you load are obsolete (times, epsfig). times doesn't have support for maths ans should be replaced with newtxtext,newtxmath. As to epsfig, all its functionalities are available with graphicx. Also, it's better to load setspace and write \setstretch{0.5} rather than coding \linespread{0.5}. Last, hyperref should be loaded as the last package, with very few exceptions.