When you're insecure about your technique, you close yourself off. Your shoulders tighten. The first thing, you should open your body and sing. Be happy. Sing real vowels, real Italian vowels. When you're learning a good way to sing technically, you find it's very easy to sing well.

In the past, my voice was my enemy.

I quit my job in the bank when I was 19. I took a chance. I went to Milan to study opera and singing. My father really supported me economically.

I learned my profession onstage. I didn't have a musical background. I had no conservatory training. I don't play an instrument.

My mother was a dominant force in our family. And I always saw her as the leader. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.

I grew up really religious, and my family still is, but I'm not so much. That scene in 'Cool Hand Luke', it just destroyed me.

In the initial stages of my journey, I was trying to travel too fast by horse by sticking to a 'five days on and two off' schedule. On the steppe, time is not measured by days, weeks or hours but the fall of the seasons and condition of the animals.

I did come from a pretty independent-minded family.