When I hear that young people have come to the theater for the first time to listen to opera, I'm very happy. Because it's the same thing that happened to me as a child. When I first heard the tenor voice, I immediately fell in love with this kind of music.

My real passion is for opera. It was born and developed by listening to records, and my dream as a child was to record entire operas when I grew up, and this dream came true.

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.

Criticism in good faith is good. When it's targeted solely to destruction, I'm not interested.

Some years ago I gave a concert in the mountains with snow all around, and that was much colder.

An opera singer is like an athlete before a match. An athlete cannot overdo anything. In order to perform at the highest possible level, you need to refrain from activities so as to be able to express this power.

For me, riding a two-wheeler bike was very risky. Counting the pedal strokes before turning a corner and learning to hear the sounds coming from buildings, grass and the climbing frame made all the difference to basic survival and ensured that I didn't end up head-first in the sandpit.