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As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.

For years, I wasn't in the least bit interested in opera.

Opera is the original marriage of words and music, and there's a theatre element, a dramatic element. It's right up my alley.

I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen - I'm grateful for it.

But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.

If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it.

I was attracted to opera when I was 15 or 16. A very rich man in England bankrupted himself to put on a lot of opera during the war, but he converted a lot of people, myself included, in the process.

Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone.