I studied to be a lawyer, and after that I did something, obviously, completely different. With change, you learn something. If you do the same thing over and over again, you never learn anything.

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.

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.

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

If you don't have the possibility of listening to music, you can't know if you love it.

I have always loved music and singing, and I am open to listen to any type of music. Regardless of my mood, my heart is always set racing when I listen to opera. When I decide which music I want to hear, my choice is almost invariably an opera recording.

I live for my children, so my number one rule is I won't go away from home for more than two weeks.