"The connection is kind of obvious! Obviously, I sing for the band and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was the reason why I got asked to sing for the band. I sang this song for my American Idol audition about nine years ago and it has a personal significance in that way. “I remember hearing it for the first time. I grew up doing musicals and the theatricality of it resonated with me at a young age, hearing a song that was considered a rock classic but that was theatrical and so vocal, it just really appealed to me. It felt like something and I connected with it. ""I love the different sections of it. Just when you think you've got the song figured out, it switches gears and goes in a totally different direction, or it goes to the opera section - which is totally insane and out there. Then they finish it off with the searing rock section of the song and then it finishes up again, back into the piano-driven, melodic, quiet place. “Much like a play or an opera, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ has acts, it has different sections and being a performer, I think that just really appealed to me."

"I kind of think Fitzcarraldo. Cinephiles know it, but the new generation don’t really know that picture. It’s a flawed film but if you watch that and the companion making-of [Burden of Dreams]… there’s a great Criterion of it; it’s the one with Mick Jagger in it, when he started the film and had to pull out. What I love about this film is that it represents what I love about film making: The film is about a person who has an insane passion for art, to the extent that they drag a boat over a small isthmus to make money, but he’s making money to bring Caruso, the great Italian Opera singer, to build an opera house. But the backstory, with Klaus [Kinski], and the relationship between Klaus and [director] Werner [Herzog], is so fantastic a backstory. I mean, they try and kill each other. And I think the intense passion between actor and director is in the film. To me it’s kind of a package deal, this film. You have to involve yourself in the movie, but it’s really worth going beneath the film, up the jungle and into the psyche of the drama itself. Its companion film is one of my favorites of all-time, Apocalypse Now — and you can go on the same journey with that film."

"We’re back to opera, we haven’t left it — because Magnolia. If you think about the moment Keanu wakes up as a battery, the moment Lana Turner loses it in traffic and is in this insane hysteria of flashing lights that is completely unrealistic, and then you look at the moment where it’s raining frogs. I saw it, and was like, “Is this going to be one of those movies that I don’t like where he looks down on every one?” I think Alexander Payne and Todd Solondz are super talented, but sometimes I don’t want to sit through their movies because the bile is just unbearable. I didn’t really know PT Anderson’s work that well, or what was going to happen. And then, it turns out he loves people so hard that it rains frogs. There is actual opera in this one. Oh, and BT-dubs, there is a musical number. The license and the observation and the amount that he went for it. The craft and his ability to sustain that much — any one of these movies could have fallen into a puddle of pretension, but the mastery behind them meant that they never could. Jason Robards, who happens to be in two of the movies on this list, him actually dying of actual cancer playing a guy dying of cancer, giving that speech. And Tom Cruise giving the best performance he’ll ever give. It just felt so achingly, weirdly logical to me."

"I’m gonna say Chinatown. That’s just great storytelling, acting, directing. I think Polanski’s an amazing director. It’s opera, you know. It’s the biggest issues. You can’t tell an epic without a big problem, and Chinatown is brilliant in the sense of Los Angeles history — the whole creation of the Valley, and the diversion of water to make the Valley. [Screenwriter] Robert Towne was able to take a very interesting historical fact — what’d he call it, Mulwray instead of Mulholland? — and tell this amazing personal story about it. I like that very much. I guess The Godfather is similar to that in many ways; obviously based on certain facts. I like that historical aspect to Chinatown as well."

"This record was the precursor to my operatic downfall when I was 13. Before opera there was Annie Lennox - she inhabited that realm of drama and beauty and the ephemeral. So I was obsessed with that record and I think also, even though at the time I wasn't necessarily aware of my sexuality, it definitely spoke to this self-discovery that was bound to happen, regarding the tenuous nature of gender. That album cover with her looking like a man was just so life-changing – I imagine a bit like when people saw Bowie's record covers. For me, Annie Lennox in that macho pose made so much sense without me knowing what the hell it meant."