I was reared on folk music.

I have this horrible, horrible habit of going on YouTube and checking out comments about what I do.

Premiering a new opera is probably one of the hardest things in the world to do, and opening nights of any opera are always pretty stressful.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.

I'm not born again, I'm not Kabbalah, God forbid, but I did have an experience hitting 30 that I needed to lean on something that assured me that everything is going to be okay. I had to regain a lot of my belief in fairy tales, in happy endings.

Mowing your lawn is against nature.