.

Toscanini sat next to the maestro and turned the pages.

The whole cast – Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton – came to hear us recording it in the studio. The sclerosis, the banal tendency to cobble everything behind the shield of vocal power and ostentation for its own sake is swept away. The greats of music were already there. Monsterrat Caballé, thank you for existing. The London Philharmonic Orchestra is in a state of grace that has few precedents in its history.

All the effort will be repaid. 

Many had turned up their noses at the recruitment of Sutherland. When he took over the Philharmonic, critics and audiences were thrilled that a dynamic conductor known for his interpretations of late Romantic works would replace the ascetic, hyper-modern Pierre Boulez. It reconciles us definitively with the much "infamous." A singing of adamantine and emotional beauty,moving and thundering.

All the others, the so-called "side parts," are nothing "side" at all.

I was in Los Angeles and there wasn’t an American on the medical team: the head of the team was Israeli, the surgeon Syrian, an Indian for the biopsy, and the two oncologists were Greek and German! Never was Turandot so fascinating, languid, mysterious, captivating, feminine and enveloping.

Pavarotti, oh Pavarotti, you have done some crazy things to discredit your great name, but when it comes to showing your skills so as not to look bad, you have always been there.

I asked [Prime Minister] Menachem Begin to send me with the orchestra to play in Cairo, but he told me that first he had to sign the settlements agreement with Sadat. A band of beasts ready to devour the listener. I didn't have perfect pitch. The greatest conductor of all time followed him with a tenderness that only someone who has felt a great friendship and admiration can give.

I have so many memories of La Scala. Zubin Mehta, perhaps, reaches the peak of his career by conducting with an expressiveness that is "one of a kind".