Anna Netrebko Quotes

#1. If you ask me about vocal technique, I don't know anything. I could never be a teacher. I just know what my teacher told me: 'Always sing with a full voice. When they tell you, less sound, more piano - no.'

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#3. 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!

Anna Netrebko

#4. Maybe because I'm a nice and sweet person in life, I like the darker roles. The really dark one is Lady Macbeth.

Anna Netrebko

#5. I know what I want, and I know what needs to be done to make my performance better. So I do these little askings, about the lights and costumes. It's not the diva speaking. It's the artist who knows how it has to be done.

Anna Netrebko

#6. I have no desire to become a crossover artiste, singing with microphones. I believe in opera; that it is something that young people would love if they had a chance to hear it.

Anna Netrebko

#7. Lots of opera singers are just boring.

Anna Netrebko

#8. Russians always need a little sh*t in our lives. If everything is good and we seem completely happy, then we become suspicious of that.

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#10. 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.

Anna Netrebko

#11. I prefer it when the conductor follows me. It is more difficult to work with a conductor who does not listen - even if I understand that sometimes it makes sense when one person is ruling everything. But for bel canto, I have to have a conductor who listens and supports me.

Anna Netrebko

#12. I prefer department stores. In boutiques, they come up and ask you if you need help. I can't get lost in the experience.

Anna Netrebko

#13. Life is not just about singing.

Anna Netrebko

#14. I am still working on developing my voice. I am, I know, better as a coloratura singer than I was. It's a matter of strong breath control and yet making it sound as though it is the easiest thing in the world.

Anna Netrebko

#15. 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.

Anna Netrebko

#16. You should not starve yourself with stupid diets, which I don't believe in anyway.

Anna Netrebko

#17. The role I really want to sing is Elisabetta from 'Don Carlo.'

Anna Netrebko

#18. 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.

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#20. For me, St. Petersburg is the city that I can never escape because it has this special energy, even a dark energy. It keeps pulling me back.

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#22. 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.

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#24. 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.

Anna Netrebko

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

Anna Netrebko

#26. 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!'

Anna Netrebko

#27. 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.

Anna Netrebko

#28. 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.

Anna Netrebko

#29. 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!

Anna Netrebko

#30. You will not see me dressed in plain, modest outfits.

Anna Netrebko