I'm reserved, so I've always needed to find a way of opening up. Jazz helped me do that.

I do everything in the third person. Performance is about being someone else.

Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.

My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage.

For my own singing, I used to be attracted by the baroque, the flashier the better, but now I prefer a simpler, purer style.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.