When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight.

But enough joking. I am singing. This is all my life.

My strength is my enthusiasm.

I was married at 16, a father at 17 and divorced at 18.

To stay at my best, I have to stop talking during the preceding day.

With my personal preparation at the piano, I can afford to hum at half voice.

Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance.

In the last century, everybody was singing lower.

Should it happen tomorrow, I would fall to my knees to give thanks to God for such a career.

If money was my only motivation, I would organize myself differently.

I have always studied my parts with the orchestral score and not with the piano reduction.

But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.

Singing becomes a form of therapy.

The public is a part of my real life.

I feel like a little boy who is constantly offered new toys.

I then realized that I could never be satisfied again with the mere natural charm of my voice, that I had to constantly paint when singing, melting all the colors, expressing reds and blacks that had to be less primary but bursting with subtly colored combinations.

When facing symphonic orchestras which have played some works five thousands times, you have nothing to do.

The press regularly proclaims my ambitions and my financial demands.

Don't you think it astonishing that, at 58, I am still working at improving my career?

Between parts I was too old for and roles that were too overwhelming, out of reach then for my voice. I carved out a niche with the Wagnerian repertoire since I am attracted by its theatrical intensity.

When working with an orchestra, you never spend more than 20 minutes per recording session.

The high note is not the only thing.

I will prove that a great conducting career is expecting me.

The public made me and then encouraged me for many years, and my future even now depends upon it.

Honestly, if the public still wants to hear me in some works, I have to go down a half step.

Young singers are much better educated musically, much better informed, through discs and videos, than I was.

I attended less than two years of Conservatory in Mexico City.

When I was a young man, I was a baritone, very far from possessing the whole range of the tenor then.

It is strange, but nobody is shocked when pop singers make a fortune in the space of two years.

This season, over eight productions, I am presenting four young tenors.

On the other hand, I have devoted so much energy to reach the top that I accept the stress of being there.

The voice collects and translates your bad physical health, your emotional worries, your personal troubles.

I am never wrong when it comes to my possibilities.

We all have a destiny in accordance with the breadth of our shoulders. My shoulders are broad.

I feel at home in an orchestral score.

This circus games aspect has existed since the beginning of my career.

The atmosphere of the theater is my oxygen.

When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight.

Every three days on average, I am alone on stage, facing the public.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.