Quote

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.

To this day, I adore classical music, and I'm very interested in opera, which I found out later my father was also extremely fond of.

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

The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.

My stepfather was quite into opera, but he'd play it when he was in a bad mood, so you'd hear this boom through the floor, Wagner, and you'd feel nervous.

My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.

I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto.

I studied classical opera, so I was always singing in Italian and German and French.