In Germany and Austria (where she makes her home part of the time) Anna Netrebko's burgeoning career has often attracted a pop-star's hype and publicity. There are two biographies in print, talk of her DVDs outselling Robbie Williams and Beyoncé (a singer Netrebko enjoys listening to off-duty) and much web speculation about her life offstage. In the midst of all this, the singer remains calm and collected, passionately committed to her vocation (and one feels with her that this work is a vocation), with clear plans about the next stages in her career. Only when asked if there is anything she would change about her profession at the moment does she reply, with an almost audible smile: 'I'd like a little more free time.' 

Netrebko had first thought of becoming an actress but 'there was so much competition'. Music had been there since she was young ('I played the piano as a kid but I was bad and lazy'), so she was able to take herself to the Conservatoire instead of acting school. But it was always live theatre that meant the most to her – and dramatic performances, not concerts, which she describes as 'just sitting there staring down at people'. Asked what she would do if she wasn't being an opera singer, she fires back: 'Find another way of being onstage!' 

She likes working with directors who 'have their own ideas, even if they're "smart" ones, who come to rehearsal with a whole conception' and who 'give the singers a chance to show their own personalities'. Enthusiastic about 'the modem, crazy productions' when they make sense, she talks of Claus Guth's Salzburg Festival Figaro (now on DVD). She felt that the production was certainly 'not what everyone would expect', and, from a conventional point of view, was even 'not a good production for Susanna and Figaro', losing them rather from the centre of the action. But, nonetheless, she 'trusted this director completely' and thought the show worked well. She has also enjoyed the recent Manon at the Berlin Staatsoper, directed by the choreographer Vincent Paterson – 'much more traditional, more Hollywood-like, but great fun'. 

From a vocal point ofview, Netrebko, who credits her manager Jeffrey Vanderveen with her careful choice of roles, is determined 'to sing everything which suits my voice' – hence her firm belief that, pace the successes of her early career and DG's 'Russian Album' (11/06) most of her native country's repertoire is not (yet) for her: 'I cannot be Tatiana now.' She has decided after a handful of performances in St Petersburg and New York that Mimì – which she has just recorded in Munich with her inspirational partner Rolando Villazón – is not yet right for her onstage. Other looked-for roles are carefully timed out. After Gounod's Juliette (soon to appear, also with Villazón, on CD and DVD) she wants to do Marguerite – 'three years' . And her especial dream, the Trovatore Leonore – 'seven to eight years'. For the immediate future Donizetti, Massenet and Mozart (she opens this month at Covent Garden for Don Giovanni) are the composers she will work most frequently on – and Bellini. After a successful I Puritani at the Metropolitan, she hopes to return to and record I Capuletti e i Montecchi. 

What does Netrebko listen to herself? 'Callas, of course, but she is very different to me; Sutherland, and Mirella Freni. I don't know why but whenever I listen to Freni it helps me to sing better.' Her own records? 'Once they are finished, I am listening again for what is good and bad, but not after that. For pleasure I would listen to other people – and to rock.' And when she is preparing a new role? 'Yes, I will take the score and two or three CDs of others – those singers I think most helpful to me – and try to understand how the part can work for me. But once I have learnt the role, I listen to no one else. I have to make things my own, and I don't want to be influenced'. 

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