Conductors can be influential. My first Figaro, the big break, was with Christoph Eschenbach and he's been very supportive ever since and we've done major things together, my first Marschallin last spring, we just recorded the Vier Letzte Lieder. And he worked with me a lot during that Figaro, because I was completely new, green. That's very special and it's rare today. It's not that people don't want to help, it's that they don't have time.
Conductors are really on a schedule that's amazing.
The jet life has taken over. For me, it's been a real terrific combination of factors, not any one situation. When I do a new role, I call a friend and he sends me as many as 25 different interpretations of any given role, all the way back to Mary Garden or Ninon Vallin, anything that's available. And you can imagine, for instance, when I did my first Marschallin what an education that is because styles change, voices have changed, people are now very much into historic recordings, and it's fascinating to see how things were in the 30s, say, or 40s or 50s, compared to now. To learn a role with an entire perspective is a real education.