When you're on stage singing, you're naked. Your voice is something very intimate, and that's why I'm scared every time before I perform. It doesn't matter if I'm singing for a king or a queen or the Pope, it's enough to be in front of anybody. I suffer, but I can't do anything about it.

I like reading... French, Russian classics - Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert. I also like Hemingway, Virginia Woolf.

Opera singing is in every way of inestimable value; a real heritage for all mankind that has been reached over centuries of studies, attempts, flights of the spirit.

I like very much to ride horses. I like soccer, I have had a passion for boxing since I was a child, although it would be stupid for me to box.

I speak to God every day.

I don't like being called 'macho.' Macho basically means stupid and a real Italian man is not macho, he's smart. That's smart in both senses: elegant and clever.

I loved playing football. In this particular match the ball happened to hit my right eye, the only one which I could see light and colour with.