When I was a kid - when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she was - she probably had three records out, and she was 21. And we had them all, and I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it.

I was thinking, Cher! You know, from 'I Got You Babe' and all those other records I bought.

I thought, you know, this is the height of arrogance, to think that I could sing this score, because I'd heard the great Bernadette Peters.

When I really started listening, I just fell in love with the person behind the aspiration, the dream—you can hear it in her voice, how she sings,”

I listened to "Songs of the Auvergne," Frederica von Stade when I was making The River Wild.

I listened to one of the most sublime pieces of music ... the first recording of Jessye Norman's "The Four Last Songs" over and over and over and over again.