To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation.

The nature of music is mysterious and so much so that it generates strong emotions within us. It moves along passages that reach the most intimate areas of our psyche without being tried by prejudices or influences of any kind.

You have to have great passion, because to sing operatic music requires lots of work. I study for at least two hours every day. The voice is like an instrument and requires constant exercise.

A career is like a house: it's made of many bricks, and each brick has the same value, because without any one of them, the house would collapse.

I've been to almost every country in the world, and the most frustrating thing for me has been that my schedule has always been so busy that there's so little time before and after performances to explore where I'm visiting.

In preparing my thesis, I have had the pleasure of collecting testimonies from colleagues such as Placido Domingo but also from singing teachers and musicologists. The entire course of study has confirmed what I already thought, that the value and meaning of opera singing, at the beginning of the third millennium, remain intact.

I love eating shabu-shabu in Japan - a kind of beef hotpot. But if you're talking about authentic, traditional food, then Italian cooking is one of the best in the world.