We consider Monteverdi the first composer of opera. There was someone before, but everything started with Monteverdi.

I still love to walk in the mountains or be on the sea. I like to be in nature. Sometimes I bicycle. It's important to feel good with your body. The body is extremely important. If you feel good, you have more energy in your singing.

When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.

Actually, I feel music becoming more and more important. It's a big source of inspiration. With what's going on in the world, we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace.

The media can be a really strong vehicle.

The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.

I did a concert... in September with the Berlin Philharmonic... They're great musicians, and there's always something to learn from them.

You need to love what youre doing.

Salieri was a pupil of Gluck. He was born in Italy in 1750 and died in Vienna in 1825. He left Italy when he was 16 and spent most of his life in Vienna. He's the key composer between classic music and romantic music. Beethoven was the beginning of romantic music, and he was the teacher of Beethoven and Schubert.

I still the love classic period, but also the baroque period, and even 17th-Century music such as the music of Monteverdi. He's one of the greatest opera composers. He was the one who really started the opera.

The voice is an instrument that you really must take time to develop. It's like a good red wine Give it time.

It's not difficult to sing in German it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.

People realize that Salieri is not the man we saw in the Amadeus movie. That man had no talent. It was a great movie, but the Salieri character was a big fiction.

The goal is always to make a nice tableau painting with the voice. The more color I can find, the more shadow I can find - the goal is always to make more nuance and colors.

I think, first of all, you need to love what you're doing, and then this helps in the comedian for its part in everything - but the moment you enjoy what you're doing, you try to express yourself, to find your way, and every time is different, of course.

I am a person of the 18th century.

The voice will guide you-will tell you what to do. In order to do that, you must be quite sensitive with the instrument and accept this daily conversation with your voice.