Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me.

I've been buying the same lambrusco from Correggio [a town between Reggio-Emilia and Modena] since 1965.

In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

I am a very simple person. In spite of all that has happened to me, I have tried to remain the simple person I started out.

There is no prodigy in our profession. If you see all the great singer of the past, none of them are.

On the day I'm performing, I don't hear anything anyone says to me.

If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.