It's important for me who is at the table with me; the moment when everyone speaks to each other and everyone listens. If there's good food, it's much better.

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

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

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.

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 know that my passion is for opera, but sometimes I like also to sing songs, because there are many beautiful melodies.

When you sing opera you are very far from the people, you are onstage, and between you and the people there is the orchestra. So you have to launch your emotions very, very far. When you sing pop, you are singing very close - the microphone is very close to your mouth. You can whisper your emotions into the microphone.