The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state.

To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.

I'd like to direct more operas.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

Like many Catholics, I was very affected by the personality of Jesus and that impression, pious as it was, has stayed with me.

There is something essentially sanguine about me, which I am inclined to attribute to the fact that I was born by caesarean section. It must affect you.

To live another person's life is quite a weird thing.