I listen to music every day for study reasons, and I confess that I have very little knowledge of what is going on in the hit parades around the world. I have no prejudices for any kind of music genre, and I listen with pleasure to many songs on the radio that my children already know of by heart, while I hear them practically for the first time.

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

The most widely criticised singers in the history of opera, Maria Callas and Franco Corelli, happen also to be the best singers. I am honoured for being part of their group.

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.

Let me say that I've never thought to conduct because the conductor has to think to the music before the orchestra. And the orchestra comes later. For me, it's terrible.

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

Music is an art that goes well beyond science. Proof can be found in the huge amount of studies that have been carried out throughout the world based on music-therapy and the important results achieved.