Anna Netrebko

“I'm just a normal person. It's not like I come home and think about opera. My thoughts are about completely other things. Shoes! Dresses! Expensive ones: with a pretty silhouette, beautiful fabrics.”

“When you're singing before 15,000 people at a summer concert outside, you need to look beautiful, because that's what people want.”

“The role I really want to sing is Elisabetta from 'Don Carlo.'”

“I have an intuition, and usually my intuition is right. I have a feeling for whether a role will be good or bad for me, and I almost never make a mistake.”

“When I started, my teachers told me that I had to sing 'Mozart, Mozart, Mozart.' I said, 'No, I want to sing all the other stuff.' If you do not push yourself, you will stay the same. Maybe some singers are happy with that, but I have to move, I have to do something new always.”

“I do not have voice for Russian music; I cannot be cute little peasant like in operas of Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov. I am now never in Russia; I am Austrian citizen. But definitely I am Latin!”

“I know what I'm missing. I know what I have to work on. Coloratura. And I sing sharp sometimes. It happens when I'm nervous.”

“The jewellery I wear on stage in the opera house is not real, but the bling-bling I wear in concerts? Those are real!”

“Opera is an exclusive art form, so it cannot be that popular. I just do what I love to do.”

“When I am on stage, I give everything. Maybe because of that, I won't last long, but I don't care.”

“Applause, it's very nice, of course. But when you're giving, and creating, and then there is the silence of everyone sitting there, listening, waiting, that is great.”

“Nobody ever looked at me in Krasnodar. I'm not in the taste of the men there at all.”

“As a soprano who sings 'Lucia di Lammermoor,' I have the high notes and the trills. No problems there. But going into the low registers is lots of work.”

“There are two types of conductors. One is the good conductor who can do passionate music but also listen to the singers and do the orchestra. And then there are great conductors, who have their own opinion on the music, who are ruling everything - and not listening much to the singers, but the orchestra play amazingly.”

“In Russia, I pretend to be a lot of princesses and wait for prince. That was my dream.”

“Lots of opera singers are just boring.”

“I have to be more modest now that I'm a mama, but I loved those days when I could really wear what I wanted to. I do love crazy shoes and clothes. But I mean, come on, I'm 38, so even if I like a dress of Betsey Johnson, I have to say, 'Stop it. Go for Chanel!'”

“After the baby, I got bigger, and I like it. I like me better now than when I was young and skinny. I don't understand this extreme fashion for being anorexic-skinny. We forgot about women with curves - real women. We're not embracing that anymore.”

“When I just started my career, of course, I always try to look very good, and I changes the dress all the time on the performance. And people came to me and said, 'Oh, beautiful dress. Your dress is so beautiful, and you look so beautiful.' That's it. And I was so upset nobody saying anything about my singing.”

“When I am not on the stage, it is always very difficult for the public to find me! I am a private person who does not always want to be in the spotlight!”