I was born in Montreal and came from a lower-middle-class family.

By the time I was four, I would walk around the corner and wait at a local streetcar stop, get on the streetcar with somebody who looked like they could be my mother and go to the end of the line.

Making a living in the arts, though, creates so many jobs for other people.

My mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman with a lovely voice who hated housework, hated cooking even more and loved her children. She was always arranging church activities such as a bazaar.

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.

I have been all over the world. I have met some wonderful people, lots of them very simple, whom nobody will ever hear about, but who have been fabulous to me.

Singing beautiful melodies is one thing, but to deliver the text so that the people understand it, even in a foreign language, has to be worked at very hard.