It’s no secret that cooking is popular amongst opera singers. Indeed, you can’t set foot in an opera rehearsal these days – and this is especially true in America – without someone, usually a mezzo, sharing out something they baked last night: a cake, cookies, invariably something tempting and sweet. The director or conductor are usually given first pick of the chocolate goodies, of course, while cynical tenors mutter jokes under their breath about brownie-nosing.
My American-born mezzo wife, Lucy Schaufer, stuck a molasses cookie recipe in the booklet of her solo CD when it came out in 2013, and you’ll find several singers these days blogging about eating healthily on the road, not least another American ex-pat Corinne Winters (who stars shortly at ENO in La Boheme). While I’ve taught Lucy to call “Mac ‘n’ Cheese” Macaroni Cheese, rather against the current tide, it doesn’t look like Corinne would be a fan of the dish. But I could be wrong. And I really don’t mind, just as long as she calls it, now that she lives in London, properly, MACARONI CHEESE.
Of all the voice types, basses seem to be the least adept in the kitchen. In fact in The Great British Bass-Off the competitors might be struggling hard in the technical challenges:
Sir John Tomlinson. Not a known cook, though I could be mistaken. Probably a steak-and-kidney man.
Gwynne Howell. I’ve shared many meals with Gwynne, none cooked by him. While his wife Mary wears the apron, Gwynne mows the lawn and tends the vegetable patch.
Brindley Sherratt. Again, many a meal shared, but not known for his prowess at the stove. Now the owner of a small plot of land and his own geese and sheep, you never know, he may yet get a touch of the Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstalls.
Clive Bayley. Known internationally as an expert on the all-day-breakfast, he will tell you that there is no acceptable substitute for the tinned, plum tomato. Can he open the tin though?
Peter Rose. Can knock up a very good spaghetti alla puttanesca, but would his Ham Cooked in Coca-Cola impress the judges?
Robert Lloyd. Again, a bit of a culinary unknown, but as he’s shortly to appear as The Mikado, he might want some tips from our next bass…
Matthew Rose. A dab hand at roasts and barbecue, he has just returned from the Royal Opera’s tour to Japan, inspired to knock up some ravishing ramen.

But if I were a betting man, I’d put a tenner on Stephen Richardson, who lives in France but regularly sings Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier at the Bolshoi. I know he’s a good cook because I’ve shared digs with him a few times and I’m about to do it again in Belfast while we do Turandot. I’ve yet to experience his baking, even though he’s partial to a bit of cake (and my bread pudding).
Stephen’s great passion is fishing. I know this because he once dragged me around a tackle shop for an hour in the heart of Tokyo, but it really came to the fore when we shared a house in Aldeburgh while doing Peter Grimes on the beach. He would frequently disappear after shows to stand on the shingle and angle for several hours, almost until dawn. I would come down for breakfast and, on opening the fridge, where I expected to see the butter, there would be a dead bass. (I know it would make the reading of this a lot easier if I said sea-bass, but Stephen gets very cross when you call the fish a sea-bass; it is, he says, simply a bass.) But the bass who had put the bass in the fridge wouldn’t just leave a bass there. Reaching for what I thought was large pot of yoghurt, I pulled open the lid to find it filled with writhing lugworms, the bass’s leftover bait from catching the bass.
Curiously, having caught the thing, Stephen was rarely interested in eating it, and I took to knocking up some rather good ceviche. Still, I think Mary Berry would be very taken by his tartiflette. Not so much, his lugworms.

I’ve been boiling eggs for nigh on forty-five years, but though my mother – an excellent, professionally-trained cook – knew her stuff and passed onto me various culinary techniques and skills, boiling eggs never seemed to be a sure-fire success. Her eggs were often too runny, so that we had to scoop the egg out into a cup, mushing the white (which was a wee bit too transparent for my taste) with the yolk, saving the whole enterprise by adding a knob of butter and dunking fat fingers of toast into the resulting soup. This, she called “American style”. As it was to be well over twenty years until I stepped on American soil, I had to take her word for it. I’ve been there many times since and I’ve never seen anyone eat a boiled egg that way, so I can only guess fashions have changed or she had a very good reason to pass off this culinary mess as a transatlantic foible.

How ironic then that while in Chicago the other day (how the five simple words “in Chicago the other day” can suggest a jet-setting lifestyle through the expenditure of so little effort!) I was flicking through a magazine which claimed it had solved the problem of cooking the perfect boiled egg; that is, one where the white is properly cooked but the yolk is still runny.

For the last fifteen years I’ve boiled eggs by putting them in a pan of cold water then timing them for two-and-a-half minutes from the moment the water boils. This was a method expounded as foolproof by some telly chef, and it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t reliable though and I could see why. Surely the length of time the water took to reach boiling would rely too much on the size of the pan, the number of eggs and how cold they were? With a big pan and a lot of water, the eggs would be at a temperature close to boiling – at which the eggs would cook – for too long. I had mixed results and mixed results are no good.

Well, I tried what I shall call The Chicago Method this morning and it produced such perfect eggs that I feel moved to share it. At last, I’ve cracked the boiled egg problem. (There, you’ve been waiting three hundred words for me to say that, haven’t you?) The way to get perfect boiled eggs is to steam them.

In a pan, bring just 1cm of water to a rapid boil. Carefully lower the eggs (as many as you like and they can be straight from the fridge) into the water. Because there’s so little water, it should come back up to the boil very quickly. Just get the water to boiling as fast as you can. As soon as it’s boiling, put a lid on the pan (crucial!) and time them for six-and-a-half minutes. And that’s it. Trust me, it works perfectly. All three eggs I did this morning were utterly perfect with firm whites and runny yolks.

The method works so well because the eggs get to the crucial cooking temperature very quickly, thus making the timing more accurate. What’s more, there was no sign of any cracking or bursting, and I’m sure there’s a good scientific reason for that too. The Chicago article claimed that they are also easier to peel. I’ve yet to test that claim but I’ve got my mind set on making some Scotch eggs over the Christmas holidays so I’ll find out soon enough.

SCOTCH EGG UPDATE
I steamed the eggs for 9 minutes and filled the pan with cold water to stop them cooking. The first I peeled, peeled very easily but the last three not so well. I think I should really plunge them in iced water. So, no big improvement to report there. Or rather, more research is needed. However, I can report that the finished scotch eggs were brilliant. The yolks, while not runny (I didn’t want that), were still slightly mollient. That is they still had softness and colour, rather than being like lumps of yellow chalk with a green rim. So, I shall definitely repeat the 9 minute process the next time I cook scotch eggs.

At last it can be revealed: the synopsis of Benjamin Britten’s contemplated space-age opera, mentioned in biographies by Humphrey Carpenter and Paul Kildea.TYCO THE VEGAN

Prologue – an intergalactic truth and reconciliation event. Tyco (his skin is scaly and green, he has four eyes) is on trial (but in a non-judgmental way) for eating a pork sausage. His defence: it slipped into his mouth by accident.

Act 1

Space interlude 1: The Soya Milky Way

Mars. Chorus of Martian vegans and boys.
Tyco has landed his flying saucer with a massive crate of tofu, but he is shunned. Only Lesbia of Venus stands by him, as well as Cap’n Birdseye from Earth.
Findus of Murco tells Tyco he has secured him a fresh supply of veggie sausages but the Martians suspect his veracity and are outraged in a strictly non-violent way.
Meteor storm, during which Tyco tells Birdseye of his ambitions of opening a falafel chain across the galaxy “I dream of making it big in Uranus”.

Space Interlude 2: Meteor Storm

Night time (which lasts 38 hours) in the “Oat and Soyabean”. The nettle wine is flowing. Tyco has come to meet Findus and collect his sausages. Tyco sings the aria “My Satnav always mistakes the Great Bear for Extragallacticon 13”. A drinking song ensues: “Old Joe has gone looking for sustainable quinoa”. Tyco collects his sausages and leaves for his flying saucer. The act ends with the line: “Inter-Planetary Transportation Device! Do you call that an IPTD?!”

Act 2

Space interlude 3: Argon Morning

It is Argon morning, the seventh sun in the Iphoxian galaxy, and the Martians are at the Deodrome, all except Lesbia who is boiling chickpeas. Tyco appears. He wants to take the chickpeas to his IPTD and zoom to Jupiter. The Jupitans are having a music festival and Tyco sees his opportunity to start his falafel empire. A row ensues and Tyco storms off. A mob gathers and they decided to head to Tyco’s IPTD to check it for meat.

Passacaglia.

Tyco’s spaceship, his IPTD. Whilst deep-frying his falafel and contemplating his future with Lesbia, Tyco stumbles on the unopened box of Findus’s sausages. Peeling off an outer label he sees that the sausages are in fact pork bangers. As the mob approaches, some fall into the deep fat fryer and in order to hide the evidence, Tyco gorges himself on sausages. He steps into the Matter Transpodulator and disappears, just in time. Finding no sausages in the ship, the mob disperses. Cap’n Birdseye remains and finds the discarded label.

Act 3

Space Interlude 4: Like, Peace, Man.

There is a “Recycling Awareness Freeform Celebration of World Dance (Bring Your Own Bongo Drums)” taking place in the Desmond Tutu Community and Peace Centre. Rumours start to spread that uneaten meat sausages and piles of boiled chickpeas have been found in a crater just a few steps from Tyco’s IPTD. Again a mob forms, intent on raising a petition and having a cruelty awareness day. They leave and Lesbia is left to sing her aria “Native American Dreamcatchers are, like, so spiritual”.

A crater. Tyco is half-mad and sings a soliloquy. Cap’n Birdseye discovers him and tells him to fly his spaceship into the galaxy and open the hatch.
The vegans of Mars go about their daily business, cleaning their yurts and polishing their tantric crystals, while an IPTD drifts ever deeper into space.

I have to get something off my chest, something that has been haunting me now for four years. I need to apologise to Greg Wise.

I don’t know Greg Wise but I know who he is. You must do too. He’s an actor, now married to Emma Thompson, who played the dashing villain in the movie of “Sense and Sensibility”. Yes, him. The one on the horse.

In 2009 I was rehearsing Doctor Atomic at ENO’s West Hampstead and occasionally some of us would potter up West End Lane to have lunch in a health food shop. One day, we were leaving the shop, probably being a bit singery and noisy, and a man who was coming into the shop, stood aside and held the door for us. Very polite. I was the last to leave and noticed that the polite man looked familiar.

Oh look! It’s that actor chap from Sense and Sensibility! The one who married Emma Thompson. Greg Wise! Oh yeah, come to think of it, didn’t I read that they live somewhere around here? I guess this must be a regular haunt. I remember seeing her up by Highgate House many years ago. Of course, she and I were at Cambridge together, or rather we were both there at roughly the same time I think. I remember seeing her in Footlights. Small world, now that her husband is holding the door open for us. I wonder if he realises that us lot are also in THE THEATRE? Why should he? I could tell him I suppose. Oh don’t be daft.

All that, in a nano-second. At the same time feeling the rising urge, the impending excitement of pointing out to my fellow singers who it was who had just held the door open for us.

As I got to the pavement I remembered a faintly disgusted expression on Greg Wise’s face as I passed him. It dawned on me with mounting disgust on my own part that in all my schoolgirlish excitement, my pathetic inner dialogue, I’d overlooked the simple courtesy of saying thank you to a polite man who’d held open a door. No wonder he looked faintly pissed off. I would if I were him. Now it was too late. I couldn’t exactly go back into the shop and apologise for being rude, not with him being Greg Wise and everything. I’d look like a stalker. So I did nothing, and it has festered ever since, largely because I imagine it has festered with him too. Not in a major way, but in the same way I still get indignant about a bloke who once cut me off on a roundabout, who was completely in the wrong and yet who crowned his bad behaviour by flicking me a finger as he passed. It still gets on my tits.

So, Mr Wise, Greg if I may, I am so sorry I was so inconsiderate and rude four years ago. Thank you for holding the door open. It was a very decent and courteous gesture, especially to a bunch of boorish strangers. Never again will I be bamboozled by someone opening a door for me, even if it’s Judi Dench. I will always say thank you, and more importantly I’ll hold the door for strangers, no matter how theatrical.

At this time of year, especially in an age of deep arts funding cuts, I suppose it’s normal to ask yourself if you’re a half-full or half-empty person in the glass department. Pressed for an answer, my response would be that most new years I feel like someone whose full glass has been half-emptied because the over-enthusiastic baritone next to me has just bumped my elbow as he launches into another verse of one of my least favourite opera things – The Drinking Song.

Drinking songs generally fall into two types: a) “Let’s get drunk down at Ye Olde Inn, ho ho!” and b) “Oh we’re having such a jolly party, tra-la!”; my main objection to The Drinking Song being that it usually encourages the type of dreadful acting that is normally confined to old pirate movies and South American soap operas.

The Ho-ho Drinking Song – good examples can be found in Otello and The Tales of Hoffmann – normally employs tankards and jugs of non-specific booze dispensed by cheeky, buxom wenches. Swaying and bouts of raucous laughter (carefully timed when no-one is singing) are de rigeur, as are wiping chins with the backs of hands, clunking tankards together and standing with one foot on a bench. There should be much swigging (as opposed to straightforward drinking) even though there is, in fact, not a drop of liquid on stage. It’s all mimed. As nothing appears to require proper washing up by stage management, tankards continue to be handed out rehearsal after rehearsal, show after show, without ever being properly cleaned, which creates a fabulous opportunity for any germs to spread themselves amongst the members of the cast.

The Tra-La Drinking Song, of which the Brindisi from La Traviata is the most famous example, requires everyone on stage to grin like maniacs and hold their glasses as if stuck in mid-toast. This is certainly true if you follow the Katherine Jenkins school of Popstar-to-Opera-Star acting. Waving your arms and swaying in time to the music is pretty-well compulsory, while bobbing at the knees is optional. The main function of rehearsals will be to ensure that everyone on stage at this somewhat bizarre party has a flute of Champagne. (Only it’s not Champagne, it’s ginger ale, which is provided in easy-to-open bottles bearing the name of the company that provides it in return for a credit in the programme. It’s posh product placement without the product.)

At the end of a long tour of Die Fledermaus for Opera 80 (now called English Touring Opera), we, the cast, had had enough of ginger ale, and for the final show several bottles of the real stuff were bought to supplement the stage stuff. During the second act, the butler serving ginger ale was curiously neglected while the other butler, the one with the champagne, struggled desperately to fill all our glasses. Champagne is much harder to pour than ginger ale and all the timing was thrown off. Most of the cast found themselves stranded upstage, singing vaguely over their shoulder in the direction of a rather neglected audience when we really should have been waltzing around the stage in gay abandon, while the furiously overworked butler struggled to pour us all some wine.

Bottoms up!

Being an opera singer, I’m something of a pronunciation nerd. We all are. It comes with the territory.

I actually feel a jab of pain and stress when someone who should know better calls Don Giovanni “Don Jee-oh-vahn-ee” or sounds the g in tagliatelle. When a pretentious American – and I have no idea why it’s only pretentious Americans who do this – pronounces the great tenor’s name “Pah-va-roh-ti” I want to slap them. I can’t help myself. We singers spend so much of our working lives perfecting this stuff that when someone cocks it up, it seriously grates.

Which is why I pronounce the massive Swedish furniture store ICK-É-A. I pronounce it this way because a Swede told me that it is the correct way to pronounce IKEA and who am I to disagree? Besides, it’s Scandinavian. It makes sense. It absolutely flabbergasts me that simply because most Brits and Americans incorrectly pronounce it EYE-KEY-A (and I have absolutely no idea why they do as it’s clearly WRONG!!), even IKEA itself now calls its English-speaking stores EYE-KEY-A. And that just gets on my tits. IKEA has simply given in. They’re just not trying hard enough to put people right.

Which brings me to Santa Claus.

I’m no authority on this and some of my history may be a bit smudgy, but bear with me. St Nicholas is called Sint Nikolaas in the Low Countries, where his name has become shortened to Sinterklaas. Sint Nikolaas is dressed as a bishop, all in red with white hair and a big white beard, and he hands out toys.

“Santa Claus” was apparently dreamt up by some Dutchmen in New York in the late 19th century, eager to reproduce some old home customs. I like to imagine Sint Nikolaas aka Sinterklaas arriving at US Immigration. He only speaks Dutch, so the immigration officer makes a bash at spelling his name and comes up with “Santa Claus”. If you say Sint Nikolaas rapidly, you can hear the connection. It’s easy-peasy if you say Sinterklaas.

But this is where I become confused. How is Claus a good phonetic spelling of Klaas? Why do we now pronounce Claus “Claws”? To be fair, “Claws” pronounced by an American is not that far from the Dutch “Klaas” so it’s we Brits who are the worst offenders there, but normally if you saw the name Claus, wouldn’t you assume it was pronounced the same way as the German name Klaus? Perhaps two world wars put a stop to that.

Oddly we are left with the idea these days that Santa is a christian name and Claus a surname, which is, frankly, total bollocks. Saint Peter, by the same logic, would become Sanpa Duh.

I’m trying to remember if, in 1960s London, we ever used to talk about Santa Claus. I’m pretty sure it was just Father Christmas back then, but I’m willing to admit I’m wrong.

The real villain is, of course, Coca-Cola. They gave us the modern version of Santa Claus while, God help us all, advocating that fizzy water, sugar syrup and vegetable sludge combine to make the one drink that defines Christmas, an idea so baffling and outrageous that I resolutely refuse to drink the stuff, ever. Well, it’s not just that, I just can’t see what the fuss is about fizzy water, sugar syrup and vegetable sludge. It strikes me as rather disgusting.

Anyway, from now on, if ever called upon to utter the words Santa Claus I shall not be pronouncing him Santa “Claws” but Santa “Class”. And who’s going to stop me?

Every year in King’s Chapel, Cambridge there is a Founder’s concert when former choral scholars in the famous choir (in my day known loosely as “the chaps”) are invited to return to the college and sing with the current choir. Extra trebles and a few sopranos are roped in as well in case the balance becomes too bottom heavy, and the repertoire is large-scale, with a good student orchestra to accompany. Afterwards, there’s a dinner in Hall. It’s an excuse for a reunion and a chance to rekindle the old lags’ connection with a period in their lives when, as very young adults, they were part of an ensemble of extraordinary professional standards; an ensemble that during seven services a week, as well as numerous tours and recordings, strives to set a standard by which choral singing throughout the entire world is measured.

For this year’s concert in March, it being the Queen’s diamond jubilee, Stephen Cleobury asked Philip Ledger to conduct the pieces he had recorded with the choir back in 1977 for the Silver Jubilee. These were Parry’s I was glad in the full-length orchestral version and Elgar’s Coronation Ode in which Philip asked me to be the tenor soloist.

This time last year, Philip and I had performed three songs at Bob Tear’s memorial service in the chapel. We struggled to keep our composure as we remembered our friend (Philip and Bob were especially close) particularly during the last song, Britten’s The Choirmaster’s Burial. The very next day, Philip felt unwell and within a short time had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

As the disease progressed, Philip worried that he wouldn’t be able to manage to conduct the entire Jubilee programme in the Founder’s concert, so he decided to conduct just the Parry at the start of the concert, and Stephen took over the rest. Stephen also asked me to write a short tribute for the programme book.

On the day, Philip rehearsed with his usual meticulousness, energy and good humour, taking nothing for granted and injecting a flare and sense of scale that, I would say, was very much his trademark. There was nothing mechanical or fiddly about the way that Philip conducted.

At the start of the concert I slid into the back of the Chapel to hear what we had to assume would be the last thing he ever conducted, in the place which had meant so much to him. I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for him, but for me it was simultaneously heart-wrenching and uplifting, a deeply painful but joyous paradox. It was incredibly moving and I wept copiously. Philip took his bows and walked to the back of the Chapel where Stephen was waiting to congratulate and hug him. Philip broke down in tears, thanked Stephen profusely for asking him to conduct, and left the Chapel, followed by his family.

I saw Philip several times since, at his home in the Cotswolds. He loved to hear all the latest gossip and swap funny stories from our days at King’s. He was never maudlin or self-pitying, and if he was depressed he did a fantastic job of hiding it, even just three weeks ago when I went with Matthew Best to see him.

As we drove away, Philip and Mary stood at the door and waved. I had no idea it would be the last time I would see him. I always thought and hoped there would be a next time.Here’s what I wrote for the Founder’s concert programme:

There’s a photograph I can remember vividly, taken very close to where you are sitting now. The ante chapel is full to bursting point with hundreds of musicians. By the west door is the enormous Kneller Hall Brass Band. Then there are four soloists, the entire Philharmonia Orchestra, and by the organ screen crowds the CUMS Chorus and the chapel choir. In the middle somewhere amongst the vast sea of musicians and microphones is Philip Ledger, wearing a chunky polo-neck sweater, conducting. The year is 1977 and we (I was in the chapel choir at the time) are recording the Coronation Ode and I Was Glad. The extraordinary thing – aside from a general concern that the roof might collapse from the sheer volume of the enterprise – was, and still is, that Philip was 39 at the time. In my book, as a 53 year-old, that practically makes him a child prodigy.

We were very lucky, we King’s “chaps”, to start singing with musicians of the highest calibre while we were in our teenage years. In my short three years we saw the likes of Janet Baker, Bob Tear and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (to name but a few) in here working with Philip. He expected of us as much as he expected of them. Sometimes it was terrifying but most of the time it was (I can say now with many years of singing in the interim) simply the most extraordinary music-making I have yet experienced. Suddenly, on a dull mid-winter afternoon, the psalms during Evensong would become filled with spine-tingling intensity, an anthem would elevate from something polished and well-executed to something transcendental and overwhelming. From my time in the choir, three events stand out: singing Purcell’s Remember Not Lord on the day that Philip’s friend and mentor Benjamin Britten died, the Byrd 3-part Mass one Christmas Eve after the carol service, and a concert in Hiroshima Cathedral; all events of heart-stopping intensity and passion, which are not characteristics you would normally expect from a college chapel choir. But that was Philip working his magic.

I count myself extremely blessed to know Philip as a musician (he is without doubt the finest accompanist I’ve ever sung with) and as a friend, a blessing I share with all of his “chaps”. I don’t think the words “I was glad” can even begin to express the depth of our feelings or the weight of our gratitude to him.
Thank you, Philip.

Grief is a strange beast. It fogs your mind, grabs your throat and strangles your heart. But through all the pain, strands of memory push towards you and start to join together until they begin to form cogent wholes. All my strands, every single one of them, remind me of what a rare man was Rob Poulton – a lovely, loveable man, and I, like so many others, genuinely loved him. He was a rare constant. It didn’t matter if I saw him or didn’t see him; I knew that – if I could get hold of the bugger – he would be a friend in good times and bad.

I can echo what so many others have said; if Rob was on the cast list, a production switched from something that you didn’t fancy much to something you couldn’t wait to do. No question. Henry Waddington mentioned the other day that Rob was going to be in a show we’re doing soon, and  both us were instantly thrilled at the prospect. No disrespect to Wadders, but it’s just not going to be the same any more.

Laughing. We were always laughing. If I said that I remember “laughter”, that wouldn’t begin to convey the half of it. Laughing with Rob was a physical, unfettered, joyous thing. There’d be corpsing (usually triggered by one of us passing the other during a highly charged, serious and sombre moment and whispering a filthy insult at the other) and there’d be wheezy giggling. But most of the time there’d be laughing that would render you incapable of doing anything else but crying. This could happen anywhere; over a pint, in the canteen or in the Rotterdam branch of HEMA, where we once spent nearly a whole day. We would do whole dialogues in cod Dutch accents, imitating various directors (Richard Jones to Rob: “It’s a bit damp”) and conductors, pissing ourselves with absurd flights of imagination. One conductor he likened to the SS officer in “Where Eagles Dare” and it just took the line “I zort zat in Dusseldorf ze trams ran on ze uzzer zide off ze sqvare” to have us chortling helplessly like children.

God he was funny.

Other memories come back. Cycling from the rehearsal studio in Antwerp back to our digs… I say cycling; I was on a bike while he was on a tiny folding push-scooter that looked like it belonged to one of his beloved boys. He looked like an idiot but he didn’t care. That same job, my laptop was playing up and would only switch on if I smacked it on the side as it booted up. On a Eurostar back home for the weekend, he asked if he could have a look at it. Whereupon he laid his hands on the laptop and shut his eyes, willing it to get better. It didn’t work but I loved him for thinking it might.

As a singer he was simply magnificent. I never heard him sing anything that he hadn’t mastered and he was a fearless, wonderful actor. He was also a genuinely supportive and generous colleague while being self-deprecating when it came to his own abilities. Anyone who heard him mucking about, doing Sherrill Milnes-esque “baritone singing” will know what I mean.

To say there’s now a massive Rob-shaped hole in our lives is an under-statement. I can’t imagine anyone making me laugh like that again.

I’d like to sign off as if ending an email to Rob. It may offend some, but I know he’d get it. And he’d laugh.

Nobby, you wanker. Big moist ones, The Helmet xxx

Here’s another piece I started cobbling together ten years ago. I’m not sure why – it wasn’t for a specific publication – and I never finished it, but in the light of ENO’s newest UNDRESS campaign to get more young people through its doors, it seemed particularly pertinent to post it now. Don’t get me wrong; I love it when young people “get” opera but every young person I have ever known understands all too well when they’re being patronised. And besides, I was at ENO a couple of nights ago and the audience was peppered with young people who are passionate about the medium. The fact is that box office takings are down and any old publicity stunt will do in a storm, which I would think is the main engine under the UNDRESS campaign.

Oh, and yes, I see I make yet another analogy with food...

Sometimes I find it difficult to distinguish between people who are trying to lure us back into church and those who want us to fall in love with opera.
“If only people could see how much enjoyment and fulfilment they could get if they just came through the doors; if they simply sat down and listened. Hmm, they must be put off by the stuffy reputation, the illusion that it’s hard, the formality of it all, that it’s not for them because it’s too, well, middle-class. Alright then, let’s rip up the seats, jazz up the songs, get the youth involved, break down the barriers, get on the telly! What we need are some hip, coooooool preachers who talk the language of today, and not some stuffy old stuff! People who can show us how relevant it can be today. We don’t want to alienate the regulars but they’ll have to learn to move with the groove, to step into the happening 21st century or they’re gonna get left waaaaaaaay behind!”

I made that up, of course, but without wishing to labour the parallel between the church and the opera house, for over a decade now we have been bombarded with popera proselytisation. Lesley Garrett, the high priestess of the medium has been made commander of the Holy Order, and her acolytes, lead by Watson and Church, continue to spread the gospel of St Classic of Effem, that classical music can be “just so much fun and, like, so incredibly moooooving.”
No-one seems much to care that there is a body of people silently weeping for an art-form they practise and love, as they watch it being systematically defaced; as if they were watching a Vermeer being systematically and carelessly over-painted in felt tip.

Fat Liver Pool

Let’s compare opera or serious music, for a moment, to foie gras. It’s expensive, it’s rich, not everyone likes it, but those who do, adore it. In more civilised countries than our own, it isn’t the sole preserve of the very rich, but is sold in country markets by dedicated producers and enjoyed by gourmands both rich and poor. This liver metaphor is useful for two reasons.

First, what is now happening in the classical music business is that the innocent public is being sold what they are told is foie gras, but what they are actually getting is meat paste. Meat paste is cheap, it’s innocuous and it appeals to a lot of people. But the problem is that the real foie gras producers are panicking that the meat paste business is the place to be and are starting to mix funny things in to their product to make it go further, to make it appeal to all those people who have had their taste buds mauled by meat paste.

Second, there is an obsession that opera and classical music has to be made “more accessible to young people”. Why? Why do the young have to have it all their own way? Why can’t there be a few sophisticated pleasures that appeal more directly to middle-aged people? Oh sure – picking up the liver metaphor again – if you smother foie gras with a huge dollop of tomato ketchup and serve it in a lightly toasted sesame seed bun you might just persuade a few youths to swallow it, but I bet it wouldn’t leave them with a taste for foie gras; just for more ketchup. However leave them to their own devices and they may well come to like it of their own accord. No-one stuffed foie gras down my face as a child and I love it now. There must be hordes of serious music lovers who spent hours of their misspent youth listening to Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. They’ve just grown up to love something else. Equally there are many who still only want to listen to rock music, but that’s alright. No-one ever said that serious music had to be popular. It never has been, so why should it start now?

A decade or so ago I used to write the odd column for Private Eye. I wasn’t the only contributor writing about music and opera so don’t go delving into the archives and think that I was behind any and every story that was being published. Chances are it was someone else. And don’t go asking me whether I wrote such-and-such and article about so-and-so because I’m simply not going to tell you.
I used to send in pieces and whether or not they made it in for the next edition came down to a plethora of reasons: space, relevance, whether it was funny or pithy enough, or simply if someone else hadn’t beaten me to the editor’s desk and the music slot was already filled. The first I knew if my piece had made it in or not was when I opened the magazine later in the week, and if the piece had made it in, chances were that a sub-editor had chopped and changed it. A small cheque would arrive a few days later. As often as not, I wrote a piece and it didn’t get used, and so of course then I didn’t get paid. Once, Ian Hislop commissioned a lengthy piece, but that was far from the norm.
I stopped after a couple of years. Journalism isn’t really my thing. I was (you may laugh) tired of being indignant and sceptical.
I have just stumbled on some of the pieces I wrote which didn’t make it and of course they’ll make excellent blog posts, thus saving me the effort and time of writing a whole bunch of new stuff! (A bit like William Walton then.) A few of them I simply cannot post as they’re very hard-hitting and alarmingly prescient. The subjects have mostly got their just desserts; they don’t need me reminding them of their shortcomings. It’s history now. Some people have even changed for the better, no thanks to me.
Also, Private Eye has a thicker skin than I have and it was easier to be brave hiding behind them than it is sticking my own neck out. I’m pretty sure I’ve already successfully pissed off one or two important people; I don’t need any more of them taking up arms against me, thank you. Not until I’ve hung up my tonsils for good.

The piece below was written ten years ago, and it demonstrates that, bar a few name changes, you could write almost exactly the same piece today.

Opera news

During ENO’s latest run of The Mikado, KoKo’s “little list” included every serious singer’s top candidates for execution, namely Russell Watson and Charlotte Church. But in this elevated cultural age it was no great surprise to learn then that one offended member of the audience wrote to Richard Suart, the KoKo in question, to complain of his “musical snobbery”. This must be the same musical snobbery that has restrained any opera house so far from employing the two light music superstars; for surely it can be no other reason. Or can it? Perhaps if Watson were to attempt to sing an entire role, without a microphone and at the correct pitch, he might be take seriously by the opera establishment. To call Watson (who manages the strange but contemporary feat of being lauded for his lack of training) an opera singer is akin to calling someone who occasionally fills his car with petrol a qualified mechanic.
But Watson may yet make it onstage, if he really wants to slum it for the feeble fees that properly trained singers can collect in Britain. No doubt aware that its cultural slip is showing, Channel 4, in a transparent attempt to fulfil its “serious programming” remit without, heaven forbid, getting too serious, has dreamt up with ENO a sort of Big Brother Goes To The Opera. Called Operatunity (geddit?), it is a competition “open to anyone without professional experience as an opera singer” which will be entirely televised and for which the big prize is a televised performance at ENO. This may make for “good television” but has anyone at ENO stopped to consider if it makes for “good opera”. Can we also expect to see the RSC choosing, say, its next Hamlet in co-operation with a telly docu-soap? How about having our television programmes made by people who’ve never stepped inside a studio? Or is that happening already?
There is another disturbing new phenomenon developing here. Whereas it is quite acceptable to criticise a pop artist’s singing as, well, crap, by the new trick of marketing the same performer as a “classical” singer any criticism is condemned as snobbish. Rather more sinister but totally in keeping with Blair’s Britain, because Watson is marketed as “The People’s Tenor” anyone daring to stick his head above the parapet and shout “Emperor’s new clothes” becomes by definition an Enemy of the People.
And quite what the appeal is of Charlotte Church is anyone’s guess. Anyone with the tiniest knowledge of singing who has heard her struggle recently through such heavy and demanding vocal challenges as, er, Silent Night must be wondering how many weeks it is before her shredded vocal cords pack up for good.

————————

In other news, the Britten-Pears School for advanced musicians in Snape, Aldeburgh, has received its first letter from someone making enquiries about the “Britney Spears School”.

“Lead by example” they always say. Not that anyone is asking me to lead anything but if a young singer came to me for advice, amidst much spluttering and umming and aahing I’m pretty sure one of the things I’d say is “make you sure you sing at least twice a week, just to keep everything in shape, especially when you’re not working.”

Yes, well, easier said than done. Especially at my age when, idle for a morning, listening to some cricket on the radio is infinitely more appealing that sitting down for half an hour with Mr Vaccai and his worthy but dull exercises. And once the rot sets in and you find you haven’t sung a proper note for two weeks, the task seems pointless, uphill and Herculean. You’ll get back on the horse in time for the next job, you tell yourself.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m not working (by which I mean actively employed in singing) I have a million other things to do and the days fill up with so much stuff that I wonder how “normal” people, with regular jobs, can possibly get everything done and spend all day at work. It beats me.

So it is that the last two months have been filled, not with warbling, but with accounts, a fair amount of writing, some archiving and some major cleaning out of boxes of old books and papers in the loft. Have you ever cleaned out the loft? It’s a dusty job. Old books and papers can be quite hazardous, filled with spores that can cause all kinds of respiratory nastiness. Certainly after I’ve worked through a box of my father’s old papers my voice feels tight and hoarse, but that could just be psychological.

So it was that I was at my desk two days ago, boxes stacked all around me and not having uttered a note (except for a couple of times in the shower) in two months or more, when the phone rang. Someone had fallen ill, could I sing a brand new solo piece in ten days time? Yes. Good, first rehearsal is in 24 hours. “Tomorrow?” “Yes, with the band.” Rashly, I accepted. I wasn’t worried so much about learning the piece. I was more worried about how I’d cope with singing anything at all at such short notice. It was like being asked to run a marathon after two months of being a couch potato. This is not to say I am a couch potato; though not a fan of the gym I keep in fairly decent shape by walking and general activity. But vocally I felt rustier than a damp bag of old spanners. And I had only myself to blame.

I’m not writing this as any sort of excuse by the way. I’m just describing how it is to climb back on the horse to anyone who thinks that you just pick up where you left off and that singing is, well, just singing and a bit of a doodle.

The score was emailed to me and I printed it off. 75 pages. A 35 minute piece in which I sing nearly the whole time. Brand new. Not exactly atonal but melodically obscure (to say the least). Vocally not extreme, thank god.

I did a quick bout of warm-up exercises and some Vaccaj to rouse the sleeping cords in my neck. Oh boy, this was going to be interesting. I plugged on, note-bashing, working out the very complex rhythms. Rhythm would be my first priority; in my experience conductors mind much less if you sing wrong pitches than sing in the wrong place. Getting the rhythmic structure wrong messes it up for the band (who frankly haven’t a clue if you’re singing the right pitches) and wasting orchestral time is a cardinal sin.

That afternoon and evening I did about four hours at the piano. My voice grew tired after only half an hour. What else could I expect? The voice is governed by muscles and if you don’t use them… After an hour my back was aching fiercely as my support muscles groaned about their newly-enforced labour. I went to bed exhausted and woke tired and with a range that started at a basso bottom C but which barely made it above the stave. Not much use for a tenor. After breakfast I went back to the piano for another two hours.

In the afternoon I took a train to Birmingham, feeling as if, given the choice between singing for three hours and juggling with chainsaws, I’d be seriously examining the juggling option.

It didn’t go too badly under the circumstances, but when you’re out of practise, finding pitches that are tricky to begin with is even harder. You have no muscle memory to rely on. You’re just foggy all round. If it had been a performance, it would have been embarrassing. As a first rehearsal it was good. Besides, I was bathed in the bonhomie generally conferred on someone who has turned up to save the bacon. I came away from the rehearsal with a better idea of what to expect and how to spend the next seven days, before rehearsals resume in earnest, learning the piece properly. Thank goodness I have that luxury. As I said on Twitter (albeit in shorthand), if you’re lucky, learning a new piece can seem like painting a picture. You sketch it out first, build up layers, then work on sections piecemeal until the whole work is complete. In a hurry, as I was yesterday, it becomes a process of trying to clarify what needs to be done in order to see a way through. It felt like wiping at a filthy window with an oily rag.

By the time I got home last night I was very tired, vocally, physically and mentally. Today I feel a wreck, my whole body aching, as if I’ve gone a few rounds with Mike Tyson. If I had obeyed the age-old advice and kept myself in vocal shape I would feel fine.

So let that be a lesson to me and to any young ‘uns. Don’t stop when you have a quiet period, as you undoubtedly will. Sit down for an hour, twice a week, and keep yourself in shape. Actually, it’s advice probably more useful to the ageing hack like me, whose body is more sluggish to respond to change.

And for any “civilians” reading this, you see, being a classical singer isn’t about popping on a nice frock and singing the national anthem for Her Maj or going out clubbing with the Beckhams. It’s physically and mentally demanding and involves hours and hours of solitary drudgery.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the piano.

Yesterday I spoke at The Singing Entrepreneur, a forum for singers looking for guidance in the business of being a singer. So, guess what? After six weeks of no blogging, I’m posting what I said. Here it is in all its unadulterated glory.YOU CAN’T WIN

When I was asked to do this, I had an idea of what I’d like to talk to you about and came up with a catchy title, little thinking how stupid it would sound in the midst of Olympic fever when most of us are thinking about nothing but winning. But bear with me. This isn’t an exercise in cynicism. Some time in the future, if it hasn’t happened already, you will find yourself alone in a distant hotel room, in a pre-performance purgatory, asking yourself this question: “what’s it all about?” I hope then you’ll remember some of what I’ve said today.
There’s probably a good reason why you’re here today for this seminar. You want to find out some secrets to success. You feel that, a lot of the time, you can’t get a break. You’re banging your head against a brick wall. You go for auditions but most of them aren’t productive. Other singers in your generation are getting on but you feel you just can’t win.
You may be entering lots of competitions at the moment, and while you may do pretty well, you’re finding it hard to take home the prizes. You may even have friends who are cleaning up and while you’re pleased for them, there’s also a bit of you that is thinking “it’s just not fair!”
Now, I’m not here to tell you whether the music business is fair or not. I can reassure you that there is a vast number of working singers who have never, ever won a prize. And every singer I know will tell you horror stories about disastrous auditions and embarrassing performances. The main reason I’m here and why I’ve chosen this apparently cynical title – You Can’t Win – is because I firmly believe that the sooner a singer understands that you really can’t win, the better and happier singer he or she will be.
This is something I’ve wrestled with all my singing life. I don’t know how many of you have read my book “Who’s My Bottom?”. Lots I hope, and for those of you who haven’t, I happen to have a few copies with me. Five quid well spent (well, from my point of view). I’m really not doing a sales pitch, but in the book I describe my own struggle (and it’s one which I think is recognisable to any professional singer) with understanding what success means as a singer, and the vast chasm that exists between the perception of what a singing career is like and the often brutal reality.
In the book I quote a story about my old singing teacher and friend Bob Tear. A very famous bass said to him; “You know, Bob, my ambition is to be the best bass in the world.” To which Bob replied; “That’s lovely dear. But how will you know?”
Only recently I visited the website of a young tenor whom I’d seen in a show in Paris. The website declared him to be “the most successful tenor of his generation”. Ironically, I can’t remember his name, but as Bob would have said: how could he possibly know?
Now, I understand how hype works but what disturbs me about both these singers is that they clearly regard being a singer as one eternal competition that one day they can win. Yes, it’s competitive, but when I say You Can’t Win, I want to tell you that being singer is not a race. There is no finishing line. You really can’t win because being a singer isn’t about winning. And if the only reason you want to be a singer is to beat everyone else and prove something, then somewhere down the line I think you will become horribly unstuck.
I was thinking of a way to illustrate this and the best I can come up with is a greyhound race. I don’t know if any of you has ever been to a greyhound race; I haven’t but I’m sure we all know how they work. A mechanical hare whizzes past the starting cages, the hounds are released and they basically chase the hare around the track in a race that lasts barely a minute. From the punter’s point of view, yes, there is a winner – the first past the finishing post – and the lucky punter counts his winnings. But let’s just look at this from the greyhound’s point of view. The greyhound’s goal was to catch the elusive hare, but in this it always fails, as the furry machine zips away into the distance. The dog has no concept of a finishing line. It means nothing to the dog, only to the punter. All the dog walks away with for its efforts is an extra meaty-flavoured treat.
Generally I’d say that in our business, it’s what this seminar has called “gatekeepers” who approach our business from the point of view of the punters. They want winners. They take a gamble. That’s how they see the employment of us. Meanwhile, we singers and performers are the greyhounds. We may be declared the winners or a safe bet by the punters (for as long as we can actually win races) but if we are not careful we will end up eternally chasing something that is forever elusive, and all just for a few meaty-tasting morsels. From a greyhound’s point of view, you can’t win.
Far from being depressed by this, I find the realisation that you can’t win to be very releasing. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not dissuading you from being the best singer you can be, I’m just warning you that if your only aim in life is to beat your colleagues, you’ll never achieve your goal. Far better, I’d say, and continuing the sporting theme, to spend your career looking forward and enjoying the physical thrill of running than be constantly looking over your shoulder to see how the competition is doing.
I also think the You Can’t Win philosophy works in performance. We’ve all been in shows where so-and-so, perhaps it was even you, “stole the show” – emerged as the clear winner, if you like. Quite apart from the fact that this is often as much to do with the role as the performer (let’s face it – how many times does Tamino win the affections of an audience over Papageno?) – as often as not, you will find yourselves singing roles where you simply cannot “win”. This is where I would urge you to recognise that our job is not to suck up to the audience and try to win their affections. Our job is to be as honest and truthful to our role as we possibly can. It isn’t to seek the love of the punters. A punter’s love is fickle, as easily lost as won. Never, ever confuse having a successful career, full of plaudits from the public and critics, with having a private life or anything approaching a proper relationship.
Personally I’ve often found it much more enjoyable to play anti-heroes, losers, difficult and weird individuals, as opposed to “winners” – good guys – simply because I’m not burdened with any worry about being appealing. I can simply get on with my job, sing and play a character. I know I can’t “win”, so I’m going to enjoy myself in the pure pleasure of performing.
The other problem with an attitude of having to win a performance is that it again implies that for you to win, your colleagues must lose. And at what cost? I remember a famous tenor describing to me how he had decided that a young soprano he was working with was doing far too good a job for his liking – in rehearsal she was showing him up – so he had gone on stage with the intention of “blowing her out of the water” and delighted in telling me that this is what he had subsequently done. He told me this story as if I should admire his panache, but I found it rather sad. To me he sounded like someone who had forgotten why he had become a singer in the first place. And as successful as he was, he always struck me as a troubled and dissatisfied man who never felt he got his just desserts.
Apart from all those bloody competitions that singers have to do these days, what else drives the misguided urge to win? When I was your age I remember all too well that I felt an enormous need to prove my success to my parents and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. In fact that need only dissipated once my parents had died.
“How’s it going?” they would ask. And I would feel this overwhelming burden not to disappoint them. It was a huge thing. If I didn’t have news of good offers and stuff I could brag about I was sure I could hear them thinking “Oh dear, perhaps this singing lark wasn’t such a good idea after all.” If you don’t suffer from this sort of pressure then good for you, but if you do, the best cure is to take them out to dinner and pick up the bill. That shuts them up.
So, learn that, for all the competing you are having to do now, there is no real finishing line, no winning post. That way lies nothing but the prospect of Pedigree Chum treats to keep you happy. Enjoy your music making for what it is now, at the very moment you make it, not for where it puts you in “the rankings” or for how it will advance your career. Success in our business is measured ultimately by your ability to pay your bills. There really is no greater or more significant achievement than that.

I reckon that during a lifetime you might be lucky enough to meet one person you could safely call a genius. And when I say genius I don’t mean someone who is adept at, say, kicking a football or cooking a risotto. I mean someone whose mind, skills and creativity are at a level the rest of us can only dream about.

I think I’ve been lucky enough to meet and even work with two. One is Carlos Kleiber, whom I’ve raved about before, and the other, who I hold even above Kleiber on the genius front, is sixty today. He is Oliver Knussen. Olly. The Olster, Master of All Things Ol.

Now, I can think of nothing more boring than me trying to describe why Olly is a genius. But it won’t stop me having a go. His music alone is enough, so transparent and yet so concentrated with detail. He may not have produced many works but they are extraordinarily rich in content, each like a fine silk cloth folded and compressed to the size of a napkin which when unravelled covers a whole table. As a conductor, he is extraordinary. Economical of gesture yet stunningly expressive, a dream to follow, unrivalled in his clarity and his ability to illuminate the trickiest of scores. As a colleague, especially to fellow composers, he is simply extraordinary; supportive and generous to a fault.

All that stuff is what you can read in any tribute. What makes Olly so adorable is that while he takes his work very seriously, any pretension of seriousness, of pomposity, makes him laugh. And what a laugh, his face folding in on itself, his massive frame wheezing in a gigantic chortle of joy.

I’m not up to the task of describing why Olly is so very beloved by those who are lucky enough to know him. And I don’t use the word “beloved” lightly. He really is loved, not least (or should that be “at the very least”?) by me.

There are so many Olly stories. There’s a rehearsal we were doing of Henze’s “Voices” where he gave a troublesome bass player a lesson on how to play some harmonics in the correct octave. There’s the time he asked a gorgeous Dutch keyboard player at the Hammond organ if she had “a swell box” (snigger, snigger). Best of all was a rehearsal in the Concertgebouw of his “Where The Wild Things Are”. A junior percussionist was making a bit of a fist of things during the final run and, unusually, Olly suddenly stopped the rehearsal during the Rumpus (and if you don’t know Olly’s music then for a taster, the Rumpus is a good place to start). There was a silence while Olly looked at the score and up at the percussionist, then back at the score and back at the percussionist. He made a chewing face, his baton still raised. Then he said “oh fuck it”, gave an upbeat and carried on.

A very famous pianist once said to me of an incredibly famous singer “The trouble with Incredibly Famous-Singer is that she actually believes her own publicity.”

A man from North Carolina recently bought a copy of my book Who’s My Bottom? and it caused him great offence. He said so on the online opera forum he runs. That’s his prerogative. After all he paid good money for it and he can say what he likes. I’d give him back the one dollar I earned from his purchase if it would calm his rage.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to spend this post begging for positive reinforcement or making excuses, but he did set me thinking about the ferocity of his loathing, as if I had done the equivalent of spitting on a Titian by talking about the underbelly of the opera business in a way that isn’t reverential and which – shock, horror – uses the odd naughty word. I’m not going to defend my work by taking his comments to pieces or by explaining myself at length.
Except for two things, very quickly. Indulge me.
I’m not “bitter” (as he says) about anything, but there have been times when I have been (haven’t we all?) and I would be writing dishonestly if I didn’t say so. Second, as he speculates, if I do “have a personality disorder” (and I quite possibly do – don’t we all to some extent?) that may go some way to explaining why I stick with doing this job. Any sane person would have quit years ago.
There. Done. I told you it would be quick.
Moving swiftly on. I recognise there’s a risk that telling the truth about being an opera singer is not what some people want to hear. They desperately want to believe the publicity; that we live in an opera bubble, free from the burdens of ordinary mortals, such as having mouths to feed and bills to pay, and in which we focus on nothing but singing technique and lovely photo-shoots.
I also think it’s very unfair that we opera singers are expected to behave like the heroes and heroines we so often have to portray on stage. Actors don’t seem to be lumbered with this responsibility. If an actor says “fuck” on the telly everyone treats it as perfectly normal. I just watched the film Sexy Beast, in which Sir Ben Kingsley empties a massive verbal potty from his mouth. I’m not sure anyone thought that it was somehow beneath him, that he was sullying his craft. But heaven forbid that an opera singer should sink so low as to swear or, say, admit to doing what pretty-well every singer I know does before heading to the stage: check his flies and have a good fart. We’re just human beings, not angels, who happen to do a rather weird, wonderful and difficult thing. So why on earth, as one of their number, shouldn’t I actually say so?
Suffice it to say that as I wrestle with a second book and continue to post blogs which may not flatter the institutions that employ me, I am resolutely not changing my tack. My suggestion to the gentleman from North Carolina and anyone else of his ilk is this: if you want a crispy sugar-coating on your opera puffs, don’t read my stuff; buy a PR-funded glossy magazine instead.
And please don’t confuse having a humorous rant with being bitter. They’re really, really not the same thing.

A few days ago my cold water tank started overflowing at a steady trickle. So I emptied the loft cupboard of all the old tennis racquets, puzzles and bits of wood and carpet that I have bunged in there in case they might one day be useful, and I climbed inside on my hands and knees to have a look at the tank. I checked the ballcock and adjusted it a bit but couldn’t find any problem. Thinking that as I couldn’t find any problem there mustn’t actually be one, and that somehow the mere act of climbing into a cramped cupboard and fiddling about with a ballcock might suffice to make the non-problem go away, I gave up and did what all good DIY-ers do: just hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Much to my surprise the overflow trickle seemed to have stopped so I must have done something right and I felt suitably smug.

Half an hour later and the trickle resumed. Bollocks.

I turned off the rising main, turned on a hot tap for a bit, went back inside the cupboard and fiddled again, this time adjusting the ball to make the water level lower. I was surprised how pleasantly lukewarm the water felt as I sploshed around in it with my adjustable spanner. Surely that would do it.

Again the trickle returned.

Huh. I turned down the boiler in case the cylinder was “kettling” – where it get so hot it ejects steam up through a vent into the water tank. That didn’t work. I had been on my own for a few days, not using much water. Could there just be too much hot water? Is that even a plumbing phenomenon? (Of course it isn’t. There’s a thermostat which stops that but I was beginning to lose my mind, not being able to figure out what was going on.)

I went away for 36 hours and when I got back there was no hot water and the trickle was a constant stream. The boiler was working but the cylinder was full of cold water. Was it the thermostat? Once the water was hot again I could feel the pipe that normally feeds the cylinder with cold water from the tank getting warmer and warmer. I ran a hot tap and the feed pipe got cold again, and the overflow trickle briefly stopped.

Aha! I figured out that somehow water was flowing the wrong way – from the cylinder up into the cold water tank. Madness. What could be causing it? Was there something wrong with the cylinder? The limescale is terrible around here and we’ve already had to replace the cylinder once because the inside of it looked like Wookey Hole.

I was on the brink of calling the plumber so that he could systematically empty my wallet when I thought I’d give Google one last go. And bless the patron saint of search engines but she came up trumps. I found someone who’d had exactly the same problem.

The culprit for the whole mis-functioning of the hot water system was… (drum roll)… the kitchen mixer tap. About the last place I would look and as far away from the leaking overflow as it is possible to be. A bit like saying the root of the Middle East crisis is a pub in Truro.

The kitchen mixer tap (pissed Cornish anti-Zionist bastard that it is) is fed by the hot water from the cylinder (natch) and by the rising main – the high pressure source of all water in the house. Something in the mixer had died of old age and while the tap was off, inside it the cold rising main water was forcing its way (it is much butcher after all) into the hot water’s territory, pushing the hot water back to from whence it had come, all the way through the cylinder and into the water tank in the loft, making the tank overflow. Who’d have thought it eh?

So if you ever have a overflowing and baffling tank here’s what to do to check for the same problem I had: turn on your mixer tap to hot only, until the feed pipe under the sink is warm. Turn off the tap and keep feeling the pipe. It it starts to cool rapidly then you know that your mixer is knackered, the rising main is pushing the hot water backwards and the tap needs replacing. Mine cost £49. I have a hunch if I’d called the plumber I’d already have a new cylinder, a new stopcock, a new thermostat, no new tap and a leaking overflow.

In the early 90s I was working at the Vlaamse Opera, based in Antwerp, singing Pisandro, one of the three suitors in Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria by Monteverdi. I can’t remember who the counter-tenor was. The first one was fired after three weeks of rehearsals. I can remember that. And as for his replacement, all I can recall is that he was busy doing something else at the same time, so for a few of the main rehearsals on stage there were just two suitors, which is quite a problem when you’re trying to sing lots and lots of trios.

I have absolutely no idea who directed it – a German I think, or was he Greek? – or who conducted. Not a clue.

Does this have all the makings of a good anecdote or what?

Of the other singers I can remember only a couple. I suspect the feeling (or amnesia) is mutual.

The bass of our trio, however, I do remember; a Pole by the name of Piotr Nowacki. Surprisingly, Piotr and I got on famously. I think we recognised in each other a mutual streak of cynicism as well as a slight alienation from the “baroque lot”.

Now I adore baroque music. Handel is probably my favourite composer. Equally, I love fish. To eat that is. I’m not suddenly confessing to some bizarre fetish. But a diet of fish alone would drive me round the bend. Variety is the spice and all that. Which is why I just don’t get some (but not all) baroque “specialists”. The pursuit of authenticity is all very commendable but, come on chaps, there’s more to life and music than moaning about vibrato. I say that with all due respect and in the same vein I would say to another group of people I don’t get: there’s more to life than just football.

I have worked with many baroque musicians whom I love to blazes, but sometimes, unfortunately, you can find yourself in a group of people who know no music-making post the 18th century; for whom the next centuries were a descent into vulgar romanticism and overheated expression.

And it can be a bit weird.

You mention musicians and singers whom you revere – Tennstedt, Britten, Domingo, Callas… – and they look either blank or a bit pained. Yes, I’ve worked with musicians who have never even heard of Carlos Kleiber.

Now I should emphasise that this was a good twenty years ago and these days the lines of demarcation are less severe; expect possibly in France where the authentic movement has established itself into institutions as chic as any fashion house. “Arts Florrisants?! Oh daahling, that’s soo last year! I simply refuse to listen to anything that isn’t Lully and Les Talents Lyriques! Just divine!!” Back in the day, the Flemish were possibly the worst of the lot for cliqueyness and in Antwerp we were in the thick of it.

Piotr’s background was definitely not in the authentic movement – he was on first name terms with Penderecki – and he greeted most of the conductor’s commands with a degree of wry bemusement. He bored quickly and in a production as inept as this one (it was, frankly, risible) he liked nothing more than try to get his colleagues to corpse. In some colleagues this is infantile and tedious but with him, a bear of a man, it was endearing and infectious.

Piotr also had a car, and this was significant because, despite having arranged my digs in Antwerp, it turned out that most of our rehearsals were taking place in Ghent, where the show would open, a good forty minute drive away. It was a bit like commuting between London and Reading every day. Piotr offered me a lift and for several weeks we drove back and forth between the two towns making conversation as best we could. On one stretch of the dreary motorway there was some dingy woodland and Piotr would always slow down and peer into the trees. “I think good mushrooms in there!”

One day it was raining. I lie. It was Belgium. It rained most of the time.

Anyway, Piotr put on his windscreen wipers. The car filled with a heady and powerful aroma and I said “what’s that smell?”

“Windscreen wash”.

“Oh! Of course! Wow, it’s very powerful.”

“In Poland, after end of communism, they make big big tax on two thing – wodka and windscreen wash.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. No money in Poland. Many peoples cannot buy wodka and so many, many peoples is drinking windscreen wash.”I flew home for a weekend and on my way back bought for Piotr in Duty Free a bottle of single malt Scotch as a thank you for all his driving. Laphroaig I think it was.

The morning after I gave it to him we were in the car again.

“Thank you so much for beeeoootiful whisky.”

“Oh Piotr, it was the least I could do.”

“Last night I drink glass of whisky and say to my wife, “this is beeeoootiful, have some” but she doesn’t like and so I drink whole bottle on my own.”

“You drank the whole bottle?”

“Oh yes. Beeeoootiful. Thank you very much.”

I think that’s what you call old school.

Given the amount of time I spend banging on about the cost of working abroad, you might think the obvious corollary would be that singing at home, albeit less well paid, is a whole lot cheaper. That, my friends, rather depends on where you live.

There’s a thing I find odd – and here I should point out that I speak here not just as myself but as a sort of unofficial rep for every singer in the land, a conduit for what they all think but never say, a sort of Hans Sachs if you like; I find it odd that English National Opera, for one, presumes that all singers live in London when in fact very, very few singers do. It isn’t called London National Opera after all but English National Opera, and the last time I checked, England extended all the way down to Lands End and as far north as Berwick. Every regional company in the nation makes the assumption that their guest singers don’t necessarily have to live in either Cardiff, Leeds or Glasgow to work for them and accordingly they hand out various expense allowances to help singers cover the added cost of working away from home. Not ENO though. Despite the capital being one of the most expensive places on earth to find digs, as far as England’s “national” opera company is concerned any singer’s decision to live outside easy commuting distance from London is an act of unconscionable eccentricity and certainly not one to be rewarded with any sort of financial assistance. So they give you nothing by way of travel or housing expenses. Not one train fare, not one penny. Zilch. Nada. Not even if you live outside England in Scotland.

Unless you are a foreign artist that is. Describe yourself as a Yorkshireman from Darlington and you’ll have to pay all your own travel costs and living expenses; a Frenchman from Paris, on the other hand, and you’ll get a rail fare and a place to stay in town. Considering both are roughly equidistant from London (and I imagine the train fares are roughly the same), where’s the logic in that?

In an era when anything more than four weeks of rehearsal was an extravagance the issue of rehearsal expenses really didn’t arise, but now that six is frequently the minimum – on top of which getting the odd day off to do other things, like teach or give a quick concert, is like getting blood out of a stone – the lack of any income can be very troublesome and irksome. (In fact I could happily turn that last simile around; getting blood out of a stone is probably far easier than getting an NA from ENO. Climbing Mount Everest in roller skates would seem like child’s play by comparison.)

Now you could be forgiven for thinking – if you have no experience in these things – that rehearsing at ENO entails an easy commute to Charing Cross, but that particular fantasy would have to run along side one where singers usually stroll over to the Coliseum from a night’s stay in a suite at the Savoy Hotel. Only the last two weeks of stage rehearsals ever take place in the Coli. For the rest, if you’re lucky, you might find yourself rehearsing in West Hampstead. This is where ENO owns the old and redundant Decca recording studio. Unfortunately, for a company turning out three productions at once, the studio has only one decent-sized space where the ceiling carries dire warnings about something that lies between it and the roof which must never be disturbed. Asbestos I can only assume.

No, the odds are two-out-of-three that for the first four or so weeks of your entirely unpaid rehearsal period with ENO you will find yourself travelling out to Bromley-by-Bow in East London, where you leave the tube station, trek alongside the A12, past a big Tesco and into Three Mills, a complex of old sewerage treatment buildings now converted into rehearsal spaces. Hopefully it isn’t raining – the spray from the HGVs as they hurtle by can be quite alarming – and if it’s a Saturday morning rehearsal there’s every probability that due to “essential maintenance” the tube isn’t running; which adds a whole new frisson of excitement to the morning commute, not to mention an extra half hour. There are no singers I know who, on being told they have to rehearse out in Three Mills, don’t emit a low and heartfelt groan.

So it is that the out-of-town singer, which would describe pretty-well 90% of all British singers, finds himself either on the scrounge to friends and relatives for a place to camp for several weeks or on the lookout for decent yet inexpensive digs to rent. I take a more scattergun approach, sometimes staying with an elderly second cousin in Ealing (so, completely the wrong side of London for Bromley-by-Bow) and sometimes hunting down cheap hotels in which to survive a couple of nights between the pilgrimage to the sewerage. I’ve stayed in some doozies, including one near Victoria where my basement room had no lock on the door, large holes in the walls, a non-functioning shower and a couple of chips (of the potato variety) at the foot of the bed.

If I’m lucky and careful I can keep my travel and housing expenses for a job at ENO to around the cost of one performance fee. No wonder then that ENO doesn’t want to emulate its cousins in the regions if it means coughing up another fee to every Brit singer resident outside London. It’s just a money thing that would need a lot of administration. (Well it’s either that or they simply don’t give a shit – but we’re not a militant bunch and we’re not usually given to expressing that possibility, except when wearing the Hans Sachs hat.)

Some singers commute for rehearsals from as far afield as Leicester and Bath. Not only is that very expensive and time-consuming but every minute you spend confined in trains and buses increases your exposure to other germ-laden commuters who don’t seem to have any qualms whatsoever about redistributing their viruses via smeared handrails and uncovered sneezes. Only last week I felt droplets of germy moisture land on me as a teenager behind me delivered a massive and uninterrupted eruption of mucus and germs to the back of my neck.

The truth is we all may want to get a bit more time at home and sing in England’s national opera company. It’s just a pity that doing so can be one big, fat, expensive, exhausting and unhygienic pain in the arse. Speaking as Hans Sachs of course.

I don’t know Katherine Jenkins. I’ve never met Katherine Jenkins. I have no personal beef with her and I have no idea what she’s like.
These facts, these demonstrations of my personal disinterest (note the proper use of that word), and my own thirty years-plus of experience as a professional singer qualify me well I would think to give you my informed opinion that she is a pretty poor singer. Or to refine that a little: she’s a pretty, poor singer.
That’s alright. There are plenty about. I’m not about to claim that I on the other hand am a great singer, because my abilities are actually irrelevant. It’s my experience that is crucial here. I’m not writing about my singing, I’m writing about hers.
My field of experience is classical music and opera and I can tell you straight away that Katherine Jenkins is not very good at singing opera. This could be because I’m told she’s never actually sung an opera, and contrary to what you may think, we opera singers are all waiting for her to sing one to see how well she does in the exercise. On the evidence so far, “badly” would be the likely outcome. In a general audition for an opera house, she would be swiftly on her way out of the stage door and her agent would be in receipt of a tetchy email from the casting director.

And yet Katherine Jenkins is terribly rich and famous. Do I envy her wealth? Not much. Do I envy her career? Not a bit of it. I wouldn’t do what she does for all the tea in China.
So, there we are, I think we’ve established that I’m not writing this with any sort of personal axe to grind. If I have a sense of outrage, and I do, it must be fuelled by something else. And in trying to pin down what that outrage is I’ve decided it must boil down to the way that Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson, and all the others of the pop-opera ilk have taken a beautiful art form and turned it into a chintzy piece of crap, solely with the aim of making someone a lot of money.
Ah, there’s the rub. I said “making someone a lot of money”.
There’s an old story about a tenor going up to Doncaster, I think it was, to sing a concert. The morning after the gig, he was waiting for a train back to London and a man approached him on the station platform.
“Are thee t’ singer from last night?”
“Why, yes I am” said the tenor, flattered to be recognised.
“Aye, well, I don’t blame thee. I blame them that sent thee.”
I don’t blame Katherine Jenkins. I blame the people around her who clearly know a lot about public relations but sod-all about serious music; the people who are quite happy to fire this operatic poo out of their glittery cannon.
Their strategy is getting very tired. Basically it is this: play up the humble, unstuffy, girl-next-door origins of the protege while simultaneously describing any critic of the protege as a pitiable, elitist, over-educated snob. The genuine ingenue versus the snooty establishment. It’s basically how George W Bush got elected.
Now the PR monsters have over-reached themselves. They’ve pilloried critics of Katherine Jenkins as bullies. A spoof Twitter account which brilliantly parodied Jenkins’ cutesy self-promotion, and a blog, We Love Katherine Jenkins, which did the same for the the fanzine culture that surrounds the singer, have both closed down under pressure, I can only suppose, from Jenkins’ “team”. There’s an excellent blogpost by Steve Silverman here about this.
Let me now retract my so-called qualifications for making a judgment about Katherine Jenkins’ singing. Let’s say I’m not a singer at all. I’m an accountant. Why shouldn’t I voice my opinions about someone who is trying to sell me her goods? If I think a washing machine is a pile of rubbish, do I have to be a qualified engineer to say so? No. Might I not be entitled to say “it looks very flash, with lots of knobs and lights, but it does a very poor job of cleaning my socks”? And if I thought the manufacturers of the said washing machine were spending far too much money making outrageous claims about their product, conning innocent people out of their hard-earned cash, wouldn’t we all consider it outrageous if my attempts to wake people up through the ancient and revered art of lampoonery were silenced by the manufacturers? Of course we would.
What particularly gets my goat, and my goat has been got, is when the corporation involved (and I use the word advisedly as Jenkins is the product of a commercial venture) starts throwing its weight around using the press. I’m no fan of The Daily Mail – you only have to glance online and see its Femail section, which seems to be devoted to discussing the state of celebrity breast enhancements, to get a measure of its standards – largely because it is unusually happy to print vapid publicity puff as news, especially if there’s a pretty girl like Jenkins involved for a photo op. And so it was that last week The Daily Mail was more than happy to reveal the name of Jenkins’ “cyber-bully”. The piece started with the usual glamour shot of Jenkins and then peppered the rest with as many unflattering pictures of the so-called stalker as it could find. The message was clear. They were trying to make the “cyber-bully” out to be some sort of lonely, sick weirdo. It really didn’t matter if people read the body of the text. The pictures would do all that was necessary. It was a beauty contest and Jenkins was, on the surface, the clear winner. And then the on-line commentators, swollen with righteous indignation, weighed in and ravaged the loser of the contest in quite revolting fashion: “One word: jealous”. “JEALOUS”. “Jealous”. “Jealousy”. “JEALOUS”.
Quite apart from the fact that the word they were looking for is ENVIOUS – I don’t believe the victim of this abuse has any designs on Jenkins’ fiancee – I am appalled by the notion that the only motivation someone could possibly have for pillorying Jenkins’ singing is a hatred born of wanting to look more like her. And if you’re going to attack someone on the basis of how they look (and I’m talking here about the commentators) isn’t that THE worst form of bullying? In fact, given that the entire gist of The Daily Mail’s article is rooted in mock outrage against bullying isn’t the whole thing a disgusting and massive exercise in irony? I’ve yet to witness a more blatant piece of intimidation by an organ of the press.
And if your weren’t outraged enough (and I know I am), the person they’ve picked on so viciously ISN’T the author of the Twitter account that Jenkins found so offensive. She may be a small thorn in the side of the Jenkins empire, vocal in her dislike of her singing and plastic image, but, as I think I’ve made the case, she has every right to be!
(Actually I can think of another instance of such extraordinary intimidation. When Joanna Yeates was murdered last Christmas, several tabloids, including The Daily Mail, decided that her landlord looked rather odd and that was all they needed to rip him to shreds and pretty-well string him up for the murder. The landlord later won substantial damages.)
Now a paranoia has descended on the social media. One word against Katherine Jenkins and people fear they will feel the hand of PC Plod on their shoulder. Good grief.
But I don’t blame Katherine Jenkins. I blame them that sent her.

A short post-script. On Sunday Katherine Jenkins announced on Twitter that she had been presented the Mozart Award at “Unesco in Dusseldorff” (sic). Aside from the howls of derision from the operatic community, no-one can actually find any confirmation of this claim or what the award is. There’s a UNESCO Mozart Medal, whose past recipients include Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Rostropovich. Is it the same? If so, the PR machine has been remarkably subdued. You would have thought they’d be all over this news like a cheap suit. Perhaps at an overheated celeb gala something was mis-heard. But if it is indeed true and she has been awarded the Mozart Medal by a United Nations organisation, then this is one of the few instances when you can actually say that the world literally has gone mad. And I’m not afraid to say so.

We went to see “The End Of The Rainbow” in Bath on Saturday. It’s a play with songs about Judy Garland’s final performances in London shortly before she died at the age of 47. It was a big hit in London, garnering huge plaudits for Tracie Bennett as Garland. I’m not about to write a review. I’m also decidedly not a Garland fan, but I could recognise that Bennett’s impersonation of her was impeccable and sensational, and she certainly ripped up the stage. She was extraordinary. And yet I found the whole experience curiously unpalatable, like watching a car crash in slow motion.
(If anyone says or even thinks “if you’re not a Judy Garland fan then why did you go?” can I swiftly point out that I’m not a fan of Richard lll but so far it hasn’t stopped me wanting to see the play.)
It’s an odd thing to watch a play about a famous person, especially when that person is a singer. If Bennett were doing a musical in which she played, say, Wallis Simpson she might impersonate her speaking voice to a degree but she would no doubt sing in her own voice, the better to express some inner feelings for which speech alone might be considered inadequate. I mean, that’s pretty-well the whole point of any form of music-theatre isn’t it? A song well sung lifts the mask of the character and let’s us into the soul of the singer. It’s not about realism. It’s about creating an extraordinary and vulnerable connection where the music touches the very sides of the singer’s core as it leaves her throat.
In this play, Tracie Bennett only gets to sing the songs that Garland sang, so it’s not the same as a conventional musical where a character sings in order to express something of her inner self. While she pulls off a faultless impersonation of Garland’s singing, it’s simultaneously fantastic and excruciating if, like me, you can’t actually bear the sound. Don’t get me wrong, she sings the songs with enormous passion but ultimately, for me at least, it means nothing if it’s not HER voice. I can admire an impersonation at that level of accuracy and devotion but I can’t love the experience. I don’t get it in the same way I don’t understand the allure of Madame Tussaud’s.
I’m not sure if many of the audience were there to see a play or, in the absence of the real thing, to enjoy an evening with a “tribute” Judy Garland. All-in-all it was a strange and unsettling experience. I wouldn’t go to an opera house to hear someone impersonate Maria Callas singing Tosca, no matter how good the mimicry (but I bet if someone did it they could sell plenty of tickets). I know this isn’t exactly the same but it’s close enough to bemuse me.

The moment that did stand out for me in the play was when Garland, desperate not to have to perform that night, says “It’s a terrible thing, to know what you’re capable of and never get there.”
Nobody likes to admit it in public but it’s a thought that plagues nearly every performer I know – at least the ones I like – and especially those like me who are starting to look down the barrel of the September years, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. I’ve had many discussions about it in pubs and bars the world over, with singers of many creeds and colours. Well, it’s easier to be vulnerable after a pint or two. When you scratch a little at their veneer of self-confidence, those few who appear to be immune from these fears, and who are full of bravura and bullshit (I could name some big names), reveal all kinds of clues as to what they’re really feeling. And no matter how full of vim they may seem to be, you know for sure that one day they’re going to hit the wall of disappointment, when their body just won’t deliver what they ask of it anymore. Personally, I think it’s better to be prepared for that day rather than steam along in a state of denial, hoping it never comes. But that could just be me.
I guess it’s the belief that occasionally, just occasionally, you can “get there and deliver what you’re truly capable of” that keeps most of us performers going in the face of unspeakable fear and self-criticism.
That and increasingly short memories.

I just don’t fit in with the opera world and I often think I never will.

I make no bones about it, compared to most opera singers, my roots are in the wrong class. My parents had nothing to do with music. They didn’t play instruments and they certainly didn’t sing in any choral society. All my friends were far more interested in sport and girls than in classical music. My dad was into boats, my mum a simple housewife. My early childhood was spent listening to pop and, like everyone my age, I was a big fan of the Beatles. I was sent to a school which had a terrible reputation for music but which was strong on sport. I sang treble in the choir but I asked to leave after two years for fear of being beaten up. By now I was listening to Pink Floyd and Yes and if asked what I was going to do when I left school, some sort of office job seemed to be expected answer.

You can imagine the horror and surprise when I announced to my parents that I wanted to sing professionally. I might as well have said I was going to join the circus, the idea was so alien to their experience and their expectations. But become a singer I did.

I think my parents sensed that I might feel out of place in the world of opera. After all, as I said, I was from the wrong class. The only opera singers they’d really ever heard of came from…yes… WORKING-CLASS backgrounds. There, I’ve said it. And they were usually Welsh to boot!

How would I ever fit in, given my solidly upper middle-class background?

My parents’ fears weren’t misplaced. Quickly I discovered that my somewhat posh West London vowels didn’t sit easily amongst the regional twangs of most of my workmates. I didn’t have a football team I supported. I didn’t know how a car engine worked. I had never been clubbing in the depths of winter wearing a t-shirt. I was born in West London for God’s sake! I’d never owned a whippet or a racing pigeon! What on earth was I going to talk about in coffee breaks?

My singing teachers at the RCM, Robert Tear and Edgar Evans, came from very humble backgrounds. Both grew up in council houses. Perhaps the Opera Studio would prove less challenging and more “my class”? But no, its director Michael Langdon spoke with such a thick midlands accent I could barely understand a word he said.

Every big name seemed to come from the lower classes. Gwyneth Jones, Janet Baker, Domingo, Pavarotti, Carreras, Elizabeth Harwood, Margaret Price, Geraint Evans… How would I ever make it?

After the Studio I did alright I suppose, but always I felt I was carrying the burden of my background. All around me there were singers having big careers and not one of them had been to public school like me. It just didn’t seem fair.

How could I ever become The People’s Tenor with my BBC accent, my erudition and my ability to read music?

Lesley Garrett took pity on me and asked if I’d like to be put forward for some Raymond Gubbay gigs. I said no. I knew I just wouldn’t fit in. “A Night At The Opera” and ” A Celebrity Night At The Opera – Featuring The Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber” were not for me. I knew it in my bones.

And now they just won’t let me in.

Now I’ll never sing “You’ll never walk alone” or Take That’s “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” in Italian with full chorus and orchestra.

The elitist bastards.

If there’s one thing for which I am eternally grateful it is that I have never had to take my kit off on stage, which is quite remarkable given that I worked with Opera Factory back in its heyday. If that means nothing to you, suffice it to say that nudity in their shows used to be pretty-well de rigeur. You would have thought that the piece I did, “Mahagonny Songspiel”, populated as it was with lumberjacks and tarts, would be an obvious choice for a bit of exposed flesh but it was not to be. Given the other two pieces in the triple bill had loads of dangly bits on view, perhaps it would have been too much to finish the evening with yet another dose of pink, wobbly flesh. Opera Factory was pioneering in its use of improvisation during rehearsals so I suppose if one of the cast had decided to strip off (as some were often wont to do) then I could have found myself in the horns of a dilemma. But no, I escaped. We did have to do a sort of mad dance with a naked inflatable sex doll, but the doll was not considered a working member of the company, so the remaining members of the company could keep their members in their trousers without fear of letting the side down.

I’ve come face to face with plenty of other nude bods on stage, notably in an opera in Amsterdam, where I had to do some pretty odd things to the lead soprano (pour ink all over her naked torso, stuff her inside the carcass of a horse and rape her – you know, the usual thing) and at ENO when we did “Die Soldaten”. In this production, by David Freeman who had also directed “Mahagonny Songspiel”, the café scene featured a professional stripper from Stringfellows. It’s a very tricky scene but gosh we rehearsed it a lot. Rather more than seemed strictly necessary. Some of the other singers had to be naked for a bathhouse scene but luckily not me. Another narrow escape.

Hopefully I’m now considered too old to do naked-on-stage, though I do have a new opera coming up in a couple of years where I have to have some vigorous sex with the lead soprano, so I’m not totally out of the woods yet.

So what led me to ponder this subject?

I belong to a local health club, just outside Bath and I’m often struck by the abandon with which old men wander around the changing- room completely starkers. These are probably ex solicitors and car salesmen and yet, unlike me, the professional performer, they seem free of any inhibitions. They probably haven’t manhandled many ink-stained sopranos in the course of their work. Me, I’m a towel wearing sort of chap. I keep everything covered up until the very last second, when it’s off with the knickers and on with the swimming trunks in, hopefully, one rapid movement. But not these chaps. They wander around for ages, arranging their gym bags, drying their hair, winding their watches, all without a stitch on.

The other day I returned to the changing-room after a swim and there was nobody there except a maintenance man who was fitting a mini spin-dryer to the wall. While I was relieved that I didn’t have to find my “personal space” amongst an army of posturing pensioners parading their pendula, the presence of a plumber plying his trade by the lockers did pose something of a dilemma. I considered it for a brief moment and then reckoned he must have known what he was in for, working in a changing-room, so I went about stripping off and changing as I usually do.

Still, it did feel odd, getting naked with a workman a couple of feet away. I suppose there really is a sort of code of behaviour in changing-rooms which is totally at odds with the real world. A bit like opera really. I couldn’t help thinking how strange this is though, on closer examination. Why is it considered utterly normal to strip your clothes off in the presence of a plumber at the gym, when if I did it anywhere else I’d be thought of as a pervy nutter? Our boiler at home has been playing up and Mr King our trusty engineer has been in to have a look. I wondered how it would have gone down if, while he was tweaking our pilot light, I had wandered into the kitchen, removed all my clothes and started nonchalantly talcing my scrotum.

Not well, I would think.

Despite being a non-smoker, I own an ashtray that’s made from a piece of granite from the old London Bridge. And it’s just like Aled Jones.

No, I don’t mean that Ex Boy Soprano and TV’s “Cash In The Attic” Presenter Aled Jones has carved out a career as an object without any practical use; that he’s a crumbling fragment of his past and he’s living off his former glory. I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Uh huh. No way. Tsk.

I should explain.

My ashtray is a chunk from the London Bridge that was dismantled in the late 60s and transported to Lake Havasu in Arizona, where it was re-erected and now spans one end of the lake for no better reason than to act as a tourist draw. The bridge that is, not the ashtray. Whether the bridge is covered in ashtray-sized pockmarks I couldn’t really say as, despite having been to Arizona many, many times I’ve never felt much compunction to go and visit the mother of my ashtray. The ashtray used to be my father’s, who was big in the City of London which, I can only suppose, entitles you to chunks of old bridge turned into ordinary household objects when they become available.

There is an urban legend that the man who bought the bridge, one Robert P. McCulloch (who was big in chainsaws), thought he was buying Tower Bridge and was hugely disappointed, having coughed up over a million quid for the thing. My dad, eager no doubt to get his hands on a granite ash receptacle, was actually at the photo op in his capacity as City bigwig when McCulloch took possession of his new-but-old bridge. The photographers lined up the shoot with McCulloch leaning against the parapet of his purchase and with Tower Bridge in the background. One of the photographers indicated the far-off bridge and said, larkily “Hey Mr McCulloch I bet you wish you’d bought THAT bridge, eh?” and McCulloch, joining in the fun, replied in mock disbelief “Oh no, you don’t mean I bought the WRONG bridge?!” How they all laughed.

Well of course the media ran with the story in the way they so often do when there’s a chance to make all Americans seem completely stupid and ignorant. And the public, happy to believe that a man could, through his own industry, amass a vast fortune and yet be as dumb as a stump, lapped it up. I suppose the fundamental problem was the notion that anyone who was eccentric enough to pay a million pounds for a massive old edifice and ship it thousands of miles away to a dessert must be several ashtray-sized granite chunks short of a full river-crossing.

Yet, no matter how ridiculous the assumption is that a shrewd businessman would buy the wrong bridge, the myth continues. Only recently I heard it repeated by the BBC’s top investigative sofa-jockey, Bill Turnbull on Breakfast News. Yup, a television news anchor man in the 21st century was all too happy to share a snippet of Americans-are-so-dumb drivel as fact. And have a little patronising chuckle about it too. Right there on the telly box. I was shocked.

Then a few days ago I saw a TV ad for a new album by Aled Jones. The voiceover described him as “one of the nation’s great singers”. Again, I was shocked.

And, like the London Bridge story, it just proves you shouldn’t believe everything they say on the telly.

Which makes Aled Jones just like my ashtray.

Thomas Hardy lived outside Dorchester in a house called Max Gate. He often entertained famous guests to lunch, many of whom were surprised to see the great author share his meal with his pets. Most notable of his animals was his terrier Wessex who would climb on the lunch table and snatch food from visitors. He was also famously vicious and bit many of the most celebrated people of the age. Wessex is buried in the garden of the house, which is where I caught up with him just a couple of weeks ago.

CG: Hello!
Wessex: Morning guvnor. Where to? Just so long as it’s not south of the river.
CG: I beg your pardon?
Wessex: Sorry, sorry. Later incarnation of me messing with the psychic ectoplasmic thingamybob. Yeah, after I died, I was reborn as a London cabbie. Not many people know that.
CG: Interesting.
Wessex: Yeah. If was you I wouldn’t go round the other side of the garden. All dug up innit. Go the long way around from the other side. Might seem like it’s longer but it’ll take the same time. Honest.
CG: Oh OK. I was hoping to ask you about some of the people that came to Max Gate.
Wessex: Oh, yeah, well, I seen them all haven’t I? You watch the football last night? Oh deary deary me.
CG: Uh no, missed it. Um, the famous people?
Wessex: Oh yeah. Well, that A E Housman, I bit him a couple of times.
CG: You bit him?
Wessex: Oh absolutely mate. I’ve bitten all the greats I have. Yeah, Housman, Siegfried Sassoon, Rudyard Kipling, er… Robert Louis Stevenson, Marie Stopes, George Bernard Shaw…
CG: You bit George Bernard Shaw?
Wessex: Oh yeah. Irish tosser, pardon my french. I was on the table as I always was and there was this beardy git yacking on and on, and all I wanted was a sausage…
CG: But Shaw was a vegetarian. He wouldn’t have had a sausage.
Wessex: Well, yeah, I know that NOW but at the time I thought he was just being a stingy bastard didn’t I? So I bit him. On the hand as I recall. That shut him up. Yeah. Who else? Gustav Holst. Sounded a bit dodgy to me. German. Well he didn’t sound German but his name was German and that was good enough for me. Bloody Germans, coming over here, stealing all our sausages…
CG: Who else did you bite?
Wessex: Mrs Patrick Campbell. She was lovely. Tasted of violets. Oh and Virginia Wolf. Another one that went on and on and on. Scrawny cow though. My teeth went straight through to the bone. That James Barrie, he was tasty. Robert Graves too. Ah, now, wait though. I’ll tell you who I never bit and that was that T E Lawrence. You know, the one from Arabia? Yeah there was something about him. He was always willing to give me his sausage. A real gent. So I didn’t bite him. Didn’t say much though. Much shorter than he looked in pictures. Yeah whoever caused that accident wot killed him should be strung up if you ask me. Only language they understand. And I’ll tell you something else for free: what happened to national service? Eh? That’s wot I want to know.
CG: Well this has been fascinating, but I must go.
Wessex: Right that’ll be seventeen quid. Mind if I drop you here? Can’t get any closer.
CG: Er…
Wessex: Shit, sorry. Bloody ectoplasmic whotsitsname.
CG: Thanks very much.
Wessex: Cheers mate. Mind how you go.

Scene: the auditorium of the Royal Opera House. A stage and orchestra rehearsal of Vito Odafone’s opera “La Merde d’Orange” is in progress. In the pit, conducting, is the Music Director Tony Mobile. He’s generally very happy with the progress of rehearsals but the soprano keeps singing a wrong note. He picks up the telephone on the wall of the pit behind him and dials 0800.
“Welcome to ROH O2 Performer Services!” says a cheery voice.
“Ah, hello…”
“The number for ROH O2 Performer Services has changed!” continues the recorded voice. “Please dial 0844 1234578973623322!”
The line falls dead.
Maestro Mobile finds something to write on and a pencil, redials the 0800 number and writes down the new number. He dials the new number.
“Welcome to ROH O2 Performer Services!” says a different cheery voice.
“Hello! I just…”
“If you want to find out how much rehearsal time you have left, press One! If you wish to add more rehearsal time, press Two! If you are thinking of leaving the production, press Three! For all other enquires, press Four!”
Mobile presses 4.
“Hello!”
“Ah, hello…”
“I’m sorry we are experiencing a high volume of enquiries at the moment. Please wait while we try to connect you to a member of our performer services team!”
Mobile holds the phone well away from his ear while the phone blares some 80s rock music at him.
After a minute or so a distorted voice comes on the line.
“Hello. You are through to Performer Services.”
Mobile waits, assuming this is another recorded message.
“HELLO! Performer Services. My name is Kumar. This call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes. How can I help you?”
“Oh sorry, hello. The soprano is singing a wrong note and…”
“Can I have your production name please.”
“Oh. La Merde d’Orange.”
“Fantastic. And a few security questions. What is your name?”
“Anthony Mobile”
“Brilliant. And are you the prime conductor of this production?”
“Yes, I am”
“Brilliant. And can I have your password please.”
“Pardon? Oh, I didn’t know I had one. Um, crikey what could it be. Can you give me a hint?”
“Your mother’s maiden name.”
“Oh, Cellulare.”
“Sensational. And the first line of your current address.”
“Royal Opera House.”
“Brilliant, Fantastic. And how can I help you?”
“Well, the soprano is singing a wrong note. On page 124, fifteenth bar, she keeps singing an F when it should be an F sharp.”
“Hmm. One moment sir, but I don’t see you on our system as the conductor of this production.”
“What? But I’m the Music Director of the Royal Opera!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve been put through to the Visiting Conductor service team. Hang on one moment and I’ll put you through to our Music Director team.”
Again the 80s rock plays through the earpiece.
“Hello! You are through to Music Director performer services. My name is Jarleen. This call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes. How may I help you?”
“Well, the soprano is singing a wrong note. On page 124, fifteenth bar, she keeps singing an F when it should be an F sharp.”
“OK, brilliant. First we’ll have to go through some security questions.”
“Oh god, not again.”
“Sorry?”
“Never mind.”
“Right sir, What is your name?”
“Anthony Mobile”
“Brilliant. And are you the Music Director of this opera house?”
“Yes, I am”
“Great. And what’s the name of your current production?”
“La Merde d’Orange.”
“Brilliant. And can I have your password please.”
“Cellulare.”
“Fantastic. And the first line of your current address.”
“Royal Opera House.”
“Brilliant, Fantastic. And how can I help you?”
“Well, the soprano is singing a wrong note. On page 124, fifteenth bar, she keeps singing an F when it should be an F sharp.”
He can hear typing on a keyboard.
“Brilliant. And when did this problem start?”
“Well, day one, really. A month ago.”
“Fantastic. OK well it’s in the system now and we’ll make sure that gets seen to. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“Well, every time I ring the number you gave me to call Performer Services, 0800, I have to redial and then I get put through to the Visiting Conductor line and then be redirected through to you. Can we get that fixed?”
“Brilliant. Let me have a look.” There’s tapping at a keyboard. “Well, Mr Bomile, according to the computer that shouldn’t be happening.”
“But it IS happening.”
“Brilliant. Well, I’ll put a note on the system and have our team have a look at it.”
“Thank you. Good bye.”
He hangs up.
An hour later, while he’s conducting Act 3, the phone in the pit flashes at him. He picks up the receiver, worrying that some calamity has happened.
“Hello. Am I speaking to Mr Mobile?”
“Yes”
“My name is Brooklette and I’m calling from Cello Customer Surveys on behalf of ROH O2 Performer Services and I was wondering if you have a few moments to take part in a survey about your recent experience contacting their Performer Services team.”
“Well I’m quite busy right now”
“The survey will only take a couple of minutes.”
“Oh alright then.”
“Fantastic. This call is being recorded for training and monitoring purposes. On a scale of five to one where five is Very Satisfied and one is Very Dissatisfied, how would you rate your recent overall experience with the ROH O2 Performance Services team?”
“Well, the soprano is still singing the wrong note.”
“I’m sorry sir, I’m not here to address the nature of your original problem. We are an independent survey company that has been commissioned by ROH O2 Performer Services to help them assess the performance of their Performance Services team.”
“Well in that case I would have to say One, Very Dissatisfied.”
“And how well would you say they performed it tackling your particular problem?”
“One. Very Dissatisfied.”
“And how would you rate the friendliness of the members of the team who dealt with your problem? Five for very friendly, one for very unfriendly.”
“Well they were friendly enough but they didn’t solve the problem. Three. This is turning into a colossal waste of time.”
“Brilliant. Just one more question. Given your recent experience how likely are you to stay with the Royal Opera? Five for Very Likely, one for Very Unlikely.”
“Five.”
“Fantastic. Thank you Mr Bromide.”
The next morning Tony Mobile receives a text message from ROH O2 Performer Services. It says “Thank you for contacting ROH O2 Performer Services. We have sent you an email about the problem.”
Mobile fires up his computer and his email programme but there is no email from ROH O2 Performer Services.
At the morning’s rehearsal the soprano is still singing the wrong note.
Then he gets another text message. “We are sorry you have been unhappy with your recent experience. We take our performer servicing very seriously and one our Team will be contacting you shortly to discuss the issues you have raised. Please do not reply to this message.”
Again, the next morning Tony Mobile receives another text message from ROH O2 Performer Services. Again it says “Thank you for contacting ROH O2 Performer Services. We have sent you an email about the problem.”
Still there is no email.
He decides, much though he dreads it, to ring the 0800 number again.
“Welcome to ROH O2 Performer Services!” says a cheery voice.
“Ah, hello…”
“The number for ROH O2 Performer Servies has changed!” continues the recorded voice. “Please dial 0844 1234578973623322!”

Come the first night, the soprano is still singing the wrong note.

Sometimes Art and Life can collide in the most extraordinary way, where each informs and enlightens the other.

Richard Suart is one of my oldest and closest friends. Two weeks ago his 26 year-old son Christopher died after a battle with cancer that first struck him as infant leukaemia, which was beaten back by chemotherapy, and which then re-emerged two years ago as tumours in his brain. I didn’t know him much as an adult but I still remember him as a newborn, before he first became ill.

Yesterday was his memorial service and the church was full of Christopher’s friends, all in their 20s. In fact I’d say I lost it as soon as I saw the first group of them, smartly dressed but not in mourning, waiting for the service to begin. So much for the “me-me” generation who think of no-one but themselves. Here were well over a hundred young adults who had come to share the pain of losing of a friend in a way I don’t think my generation would ever had done.

The service was extraordinary. Richard spoke, brilliantly, and two of Christopher’s friends too, their tributes full of funny stories about him, his humour, his kindness and his lust for life. As a child Christopher had struggled to make friends – a symptom of his combat with his disease and his long periods of hospitalisation – but he’d later flowered at a local theatre club and then at university.

And of friends he clearly had no shortage. Someone wrote and played a song. Tears were shed by the gallon. But there was no anger, no sense of outrage at Christopher’s too-short life; just wonderful memories, deep gratitude to have known him and lots and lots of love.

And then the vicar spoke.

Earlier in the week I could think about nothing but vicars.

There’s going to be a memorial service for Bob Tear in King’s Chapel, Cambridgein November (as well as the one planned in London in September) and I’m very touched that Philip Ledger has asked me to sing a few songs with him in tribute to Bob. We’ve been figuring out what to do and there was no doubt that we must perform Britten’s The Choirmaster’s Burial from “Winter Words”, his cycle of Thomas Hardy settings. The poem, related by “the tenorman”, tells what happens when the choirmaster dies – “choir” relating not to singers but to a choir of viols or “lutes”, commonplace in the West Country before churches installed organs. Hardy’s novel “Under The Greenwood Tree” is all about this. The choirmaster has asked his players that when he dies, they’ll play his favourite psalm, Mount Ephraim, at his burial but the new-school vicar poo-poos the idea as old-fashioned and he is buried in silence. That night the vicar is awoken by the sound of the choir, dressed in white, playing and singing Mount Ephraimat the grave of their friend.

It’s a wonderful song and you can see how it just has to be sung for Bob.

Bob wrote a set of poems as a response to Winter Words which became a song cycle by Jonathan Dove called “Out Of Winter” and they performed the cycle together a few times. I’d hoped I could do their song about the vicar at Bob’s memorial. It describes how the moment the vicar said “no” his soul turned to a husk. Bob’s poem is very “Bob” in that it can seem like a coruscating attack on the priest and his kin, whereas, if I had to offer my take on it (which I suppose I do as I’m the one writing this blog) I’d say his point was that you don’t have to wear a dog collar to understand the true nature of God. Far from it.

Philip Ledger and I discussed long and hard whether we should do the song, the worry being that people might miss the point Bob was making and they’d feel that his own memorial service wasn’t the place to be having a vicious dig at the clergy. So, sadly, we decided against it.

We want to celebrate Bob’s deeply-held spirituality and the best way we can find to do that is by singing Salutation from Finzi’s “Die Natalis”, his settings of Thomas Traherne. And we’ll do a song from Schubert’s “Die Schöne Müllerin”. When Bob taught me, these were both pieces that I took to him for lessons.

Just as the vicar who appears in Hardy’s poem (and later in Bob’s) is spiritually disconnected from his flock so, it seemed, was the vicar at Christopher’s funeral. He launched into a sermon that sounded as if it had been pulled from a file marked “for funerals of people who die too young”. In his third sentence he said “death often strikes me as being at odds with nature” at which point the entire congregation collectively thought “what the hell are you talking about?”  I don’t think one person there thought that death was at odds with nature. Death is entirely natural. He went on in a vein that presumed we were all angry with his god for snatching Christopher from us too young. And his solution to this was to ask his god into our lives.

Hadn’t he been listening? Hadn’t he heard the tributes of gratitude for Christopher? Didn’t he hear how joyous these young people had been to have known Christopher? Had anyone manifested any sort of anger? Er, no. The only anger I was now feeling was that he seemed to be turning the death of my friend’s son into a campaign to drag a large number of young adults back into his fold.

God had already been in the church, in the hearts of Christopher’s friends, but the vicar was so locked into his dogma and his own job description that he couldn’t hear him/her.

Luckily the vicar shut up after ten minutes, by which time no-one was listening, and we could all lustily sing the final hymn, leave his church and hug Christopher’s family.

I think I’ve discovered a psychological condition.

Nessun Dorma Syndrome, or NDS for short: the state-of-mind on realising the gaping chasm between singing a popular aria from an opera and the ability to sing the entire role from that opera in an opera house. Also known as the Habanera Delusion and the Brindisi Complex.

The patient may, with plastic surgery and lots of eye make-up, learn to live in the state of delusion or simply be too dim to see the inherent problem as a problem at all. In this case it helps if the patient cannot actually sing the popular aria itself, except possibly in a much lower key, and thinks of the words of the aria as a sort of nonsensical shopping list in a funny foreign language. In time the patient will give up any intention of singing the entire role and may possibly marry a daytime TV presenter. In this case NDS can, hopefully, be safely contained within a very small area of Wales.

In some cases, amongst those with enough awareness of the inherent problem, NDS can manifest itself in an outburst of rejection: the patient, on realising his (or her) possible shortcomings, spurns the entire medium of opera rather than face his (or her) dilemma head on. “If I dump it, it can’t dump me” is the essence of what is happening, and the patient never faces the danger of revealing his (or her) shortcomings to a more discerning audience. The general public then believes the problem to be with the medium rather than with the NDS sufferer himself (or herself). In this way the patient can live with the condition, eventually convincing himself (or herself) that he (or she) never actually had NDS but rather that he (or she) was never given the opportunity by the opera establishment to prove what he (or she) could really do.

I’ve had it with Norman Lebrecht. I enjoyed his book The Maestro Myth. I enjoyed even more handing it to a well-known French conductor for a gander and watching him dive straight to the index to see if he was mentioned. (He wasn’t.)

I like the idea of a journalist who takes a particular interest in the workings of the classical music trade. Unfortunately Lebrecht seems to think he is the ONLY journalist with this interest and has turned himself, so he imagines, into a sort of caped crusader with super x-ray vision that can see through the veneer of PR. Supernorm and his Sword of Truth can cut through agents’ bullshit with a single stroke! Summoned by the Normphone he will jump into the Normobile to do battle with musical injustices, arrogant divas, people who don’t like Mahler and, er, fees that he thinks are too high!

Sometimes he gets it right but too often he gets it wrong, imagining skullduggery where none exists. And he loves a headline, even though it might be total bollocks. Bad news for the music profession is good news for Supernorm. He adores it, drooling over the imminent collapse of various orchestras, and pronouncing the death of opera and record companies even though they are in fact still breathing. In fact Supernorm has become so obsessed with being the first to break a story with an eye-catching headline that he seems to have stopped bothering to find out if a story may be accurate or not, and if a few musicians get hit while he’s fighting music crime then so what? They’re victims of friendly fire! Supernorm to the rescue! That’s what’s really important!

I used to follow Supernorm on Twitter but last week he overstepped the mark. First he tweeted a headline “Lady Rattle gives way to Plain Jane”, the story being that Magdalena Kozena was being replaced in a performance of “Das Lied von der Erde” by Jane Irwin. To me this smacked of the worst form of sexism, the implication being that rather than getting his Mahler fix from Harrods, it would now be coming from Woolworths. Now, if Supernorm really knew his stuff he would know that Jane Irwin is a fantastically talented, world-class singer. Perhaps he did know that but he didn’t care, simply because he liked his headline too much. Someone has argued that he was simply making a joke about titles. Even so, the implication is still that somebody was getting short-changed, and I find that offensive on Jane’s behalf.

It was the story that Supernorm “broke” a few days later that really did it for me. Another hugely talented singer, Sandrine Piau, has withdrawn from Glyndebourne’s “Rinaldo” because of a knee injury. Supernorm smelled something fishy where no seafood was in evidence. He sneered, he quizzed. He cast doubt upon Sandrine’s professionalism. Joyce DiDonato has sung Rosina with a broken leg, why couldn’t this French woman buck up and do her job? I’m not going to begin to pull this apart. It does it for itself but I’m sure that what Sandrine really needed when she’s probably depressed and in pain is Supernorm jumping up and down on her injured knee. That really scored a victory for classical music.

There are other instances I could cite of Supernorm’s thirst for sensationalism, a thirst that would be more appropriate if he were writing about premier footballers for the Sun, but I think I’ve made the point.

Classical music, and I mean real classical music and not all that Brit Awards tosh, is under serious threat. What we need is considered and thoughtful journalism fighting its corner. What we don’t need is a twat in a superhero cape beating the living daylights out of its practitioners just because it makes him look important or clever.

Now the dust has settled a bit on Alfiegate, it might be a good time to reflect on what happened in the last couple of days. The more I think about it the more it seems to me that Alfie may well have no intention of singing many, if any, opera roles again. He may have said what he said on Desert Island Discs because he is in the process of rationalising a choice to leave conventional opera behind.
Who can blame him? The temptations are huge.
On the one hand the life of a regular opera singer: long rehearsal periods leading to relatively few performances. A limited audience. Difficult repertoire. Public anonymity, save to a few enthusiasts. Critics dissecting his performances. Long stints away from his family. Loneliness. Auditions. Opera managers sucking their teeth about which repertoire is right for him and his voice. A modest income (despite all the rumours to the contrary). Worst of all perhaps – and something that is oddly peculiar to opera as an art form – the very real possibility that a few fanatics will one day develop an irrational loathing of his singing and boo loudly at the end of a hard evening’s work (which singular phenomenon alone could be the subject of a whole different blog).
On the other: all the trappings of popular success. Earnings well beyond anything he can possibly earn on the regular opera circuit. The love and adulation of a relatively unsophisticated public (and I don’t mean that in a sneering way). The luxury of being critic-proof. Repertoire which he likes but would never sing on the opera stage. A certain amount of self-governance in his career path. Amplification – that is, never having to worry about fighting an orchestra or being told that his voice isn’t loud enough; the microphone can take care of those problems. The chance, in musicals, to inhabit a role for more than a handful of performances at a time.

Whenever pundits start banging on about opera singers having “a responsibility to their art” I find myself grimacing. Afie’s first and foremost responsibility is to himself and his family. Singers leave the opera profession on a daily basis for a plethora of reasons, the vast number in complete obscurity. Who on earth has the right to say to someone else “you have to keep on doing on what you’re doing because it makes ME feel better”?
But this is all speculation on my part. Whatever Alfie chooses to do with the rest of his life is alright by me. I hope he does return to opera because he was starting to manage the rare feat of being a popular singer both inside the opera house and away from it. And that could be a very good thing.
A lot of people (and I include myself until I took the time to reflect on what this fuss is all about) took umbrage because the implication of what Alfie said was that unless he was in an opera it was going to be very boring. Well I for one don’t think Alfie is capable of that sort of malice. I just believe that he didn’t think it through.
No, if there’s a villain in the piece it has to be the PR types. They’ve got exactly what they want. Opera is back on the stand as elitist and snobby. And Alfie is the populists’ champion. And, more immediately and important to them, Les Mis has garnered vast amounts of absolutely free advertising.
The truly extraordinary thing about this is how this idea of opera snobbery came about. I remember a time when I was completely unaware of any charge of elitism. I went to Covent Garden in jeans, standing in line for cheap tickets with lots of perfectly ordinary people from all backgrounds.
Then Classic FM came along.
Suddenly we were in a new world of bleeding chunks and popular arias. While claiming to bring classical music to a new, wider audience, all they were really doing was establishing a new class system in music appreciation. The PR people got to work and when they heard the word opera they immediately glammed it up with images of people in evening gowns and dinner jackets. There were black limousines, champagne and red roses. The message was that by listening to classical music, people were tapping into a whole new world of sophisticated glamour. But – and this is the really insidious part – heaven forbid that ordinary people think that they could eat at the banquet itself. “Oh no, that’s far too glamorous and refined for the likes of YOU. You can have some tasty little morsels, some scraps from the table. You can go in your jeans and baseball caps to big arena concerts where you can see singers in lovely dresses come out and sing the bits you like and know, but the real stuff, proper operas, that’s hard. That’s for an elite who dress up in their finery and go to stuffy, intimidating places called opera houses. Keep out you ignorant plebs!”
You can just look at “Popstar to Operastar’ to prove my point. I haven’t seen it this year. I saw one episode last year and, even though I’m told it’s supposed to be a bit of fun, was profoundly depressed. Not by the godawful singing, but by the perpetuation of the idea that anything to do with opera necessarily involves everyone bunging on dinner jackets and getting tarted up. What better way to reinforce the idea that opera is, above anything else, elitist and snobby? And none of this has ANYTHING to do with the music or the drama. It is all to do with a marketing image. Opera is now a publicist’s easy shortcut to depict a type of lifestyle, a lifestyle that is utterly and bizarrely at odds with 99.9% of the people I know that love the art-form.
And if that doesn’t make you want to say “grrrr”, I don’t know what will.
So-called opera snobs don’t react badly to the various assaults on the genre because they’re elitist. They do it because the stuff that is being force-fed to the unknowing public is simply bad.
I use the Italian food argument. Lots of people eat pizza, which they regard as Italian food, at Pizza Hut. Lots of people except Italians, that is. Italians of every class and income would regard the food that Pizza Hut sells as an affront to their civilisation. Yes it’s edible, barely, but it is as close to authentic Italian food as a poodle is to a racehorse. You wouldn’t call Italians snobs for not eating at Pizza Hut. You’d say, well, yes of course they wouldn’t eat there. Because it’s not the real thing. It’s not really Italian food.
And so it is with the pulpy, glutinous, pineapple-chunk-topped atrocity (which comes with a huge cola and garlic bread) that is the thick-crust pizza known as “popular classics”. It isn’t really opera.

Alfie Boe is a very nice guy. We did A Midsummer Night’s Dream together at ENO about seven years ago when he was Lysander and I did my usual Flute. He even asked me if I could give him some advice about a section which sits in an awkward part of the passaggio, the area where the voice “turns” into the higher register. I can’t remember what I told him but he sorted it out. He acted well too, quite happily playing the buffoon.

A couple of years later we met in the green room at Television Centre. We were both on BBC Breakfast News, he to promote his first solo album and I because there had been a lot of media interest in a project I’d done, photographing everything I ate for a year and displaying the photos as a collage. It was a slow news day in the Silly Season. I was introduced as an Artist and he as a Tenor. It was quite strange because, at the time, of the two of us I guess I was the one with more of a track record in the Tenor department, though in a very different area of singing. That’s television for you. Not that I cared very much. I was just so confused and flattered at being described as an Artist. Alfie had two minders with him from the record company’s PR department. I was on my tod.

A couple of years after that I went and saw Alfie backstage, very briefly, after the Dress Rehearsal of La Boheme at ENO when they did the new Miller production. I thought he did a great job. So, his voice didn’t have quite the oomph that the Coliseum needs for Puccini – it’s an awkward bugger that way as I know all too well – but it was a lovely performance and his singing was always true, never pushed.

I heard that Alfie’s record label, I think it was EMI, dropped him after a couple of discs because he refused to sing crap. I’m not sure what exactly but I think it was the genre that can be best described as taking a banal pop song, translating it into Italian, bunging in an orchestra and choir and, bingo, transforming it into “classical” music. It is total and utter bilge and I wish the Mylenes, Katherines, Russells, Hayleys etc etc of this world and their Hello! magazine approach to culture would be flung from a very high cliff, but I don’t suppose that’s going to happen. I digress. Anyway… I admired Alfie for saying “no, I’m a trained opera singer and I don’t want to do that stuff.” He moved to another label and knuckled down to building his opera career, singing large roles at ENO and small roles at Covent Garden. The last role at the Garden I saw him down for was The Messenger in Elektra, who has about three lines, albeit difficult ones.

The thing about Alfie, I always thought, was that he had the talent and the will to do all that Classic FM stuff which I so hate but he also managed the rare feat of sticking at his opera career at the same time. Good for him, I thought.

In the last year or so (in which I believe he switched again to a big record label), I’ve noticed that Alfie’s publicity machine has been out in full force, and he’s hardly been out of the media. This, I’m sure, has everything to do with him going into Les Miserables at the end of this month. I don’t know the show – I’m not a huge fan of musicals – so I have no opinion on whether this is a good or a bad idea. That’s up to him. I have no problem with opera singers doing musicals. My wife Lucy does both and very well too. Opera companies in Britain can be a bit snooty about it. They tend to assume that once you’ve done a musical, that’s it, you’ve turned your back on opera, and it can be very hard to persuade them otherwise. I have no idea if this is something that bothers Alfie. We will see what the next years bring.

Today, Alfie appeared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs. I haven’t heard the programme but apparently he said that he finds going to opera pretty boring and only enjoys it when he’s in it. Good for him for being honest but he surely can’t be surprised if this is making a lot of opera people upset. It’s the sort of thing Jonathan Miller says all the time, but from a slightly different perspective. And let’s give Alfie a break. He has a young family. Why should he go and see operas in the evening? It sounds to me like he and his publicists have decided that they want to project an image of the ordinary bloke, a bit anti establishment, with whom other “ordinary” people can identify.

I don’t go out to the opera that much either, for many reasons. In the last six months I think I’ve seen four productions I’ve not been in. But I have a huge respect for my fellow professionals and for the punters who do love and support opera. I hope Alfie said something like that. If he didn’t then he certainly shot himself in the foot as far as the opera world is concerned.

The more I think about it, the more I find that my biggest problem with today’s Alfie “scandal” is that he was on Desert Island Discs at all. He’s sung a few operas, made a handful of records and is about to debut in his first musical. He doesn’t have a career in Europe and is little-known in the States. In what way is he a prominent candidate for this flagship radio programme? The only reason is that he is currently very much in the public eye due to all the publicity surrounding his upcoming appearance in Les Mis. But is that the remit of the programme? Has DID become just another publicity vehicle for people with stuff to plug? If so, then fine, have Alfie on. But if it’s to celebrate the life and work of a renowned singer or public figure (which is what I thought the programme was about), for my money, he’s a few more years of hard graft to do to collect those laurels. I can prepare a list of much more qualified interviewees. And no, not for a moment would I put my own name on that list. Do me a favour!

I don’t blame Alfie for doing the programme. Are you kidding? He should say no? I blame the publicists and the producers. Do you know that the great humorist and columnist Miles Kington never appeared on DID? That rather demonstrates how off-kilter this is. Why not get Katherine Jenkins on? Or Justin Bieber? Or Jordan?

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Quietly slagging off the very genre that started your career in the first place doesn’t seem like a good plan if Alfie is serious about continuing as an opera singer. And when I say opera singer I mean someone who sings whole operas, not just little chunks of the stuff. You know, like some of those twats I mentioned earlier.

I think Alfie, like so many before him, finds himself at something of a crossroads; but if he thinks that by taking the yellow brick road which promises arena concerts, frequent appearances on daytime telly and massive wealth, he can later roll up at Covent Garden or any major opera house and expect them to take him seriously and offer him some decent roles, I think he’s being led up the garden path. But what do I know?

Earlier today a soprano friend of ours tweeted “Too many notes, too little time!” To which I responded “Better than not many notes, too much time.” She’s busy and to reinforce her excitement I reminded her that she’s far better off than many of her fellow singers in having lots of work. Lots of singers don’t. I’m not working at the moment either, but that isn’t a problem. Nor did it provoke my response. I have savings, my outgoings are low and my wife is bringing home the bacon. And I’ve been doing the singing lark for a very long time. I’m not worried.
I suppose I was saying to her “Be grateful and don’t moan about being too busy.” Don’t get me wrong. I know she tweeted what she said because she is genuinely concerned about having too little time to learn a lot of new music, but I’m sure she’s thrilled to be busy and as the saying goes “be careful what you wish for…”
Another friend of mine, a globe-trotting bass who moans to his agent if he has two weeks off, texted me last year with “At Heathrow. Just back from New York. Off to Tokyo in the morning. What a life.” I texted him back with “Just done a pee. Need to do a poo. What a life”. He called me something rude after that.
But the more I think about it the more I realise we all do it. Twitter and Facebook are awash with remarks like “Crazy busy at the moment!” “Knackered!” “Rushing to catch a plane!” I’m as bad a culprit as anyone. We’re always trying to assert how much we are in demand, how much we are liked. We never, ever say “Having a tough time of it at the moment. Really worried about my future. Can anybody help?” We NEVER, EVER say anything like “Having a few vocal problems which I’ll have to sort out before my next job.”
We’ve all fallen victim to a salesman culture in which we are constantly trying to impress everyone. We try and impress our friends, we’re desperate to impress our parents (even after they have died) and we’re even trying to impress our children.
What the fuck is that all about?
Of course I understand, as an addicted impresser myself (you have to ask yourselves why I write this blog don’t you?) that anyone mad enough to be a freelancer in the arts knows the score. People don’t like failure. They only want to hear about success. They don’t want to have rumours floating around about flaws and insecurities.
Isn’t this all a bit bonkers? If social media have a proper function shouldn’t they be places where we can at least be honest with our FRIENDS? Do we really have to spend so much energy on showing off to people who shouldn’t really give a toss, and who, let’s face it, privately roll their eyes whenever they read yet another posting on how fabulously your career is going? As Gore Vidal said: ‘It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” Ghastly though that is, I bet we can all identify with it a little.

The burning question for me is this: When did we all become so insecure that we have to expend so much energy asserting how fantastically secure we are?

I have nothing to learn.

Well isn’t that going to need a little clarification – and as that is a rhetorical question I’m going to deliberately omit a question mark. Nope, that doesn’t look right at all, so here’s one to put things right? Oh crap, this is just getting worse. I’ll start again.

I have nothing to learn.

By which I don’t mean that I have become some paradigm of knowledge acquisition, a Master of Technique, or a guru; someone who has learned it all, whatever “it” might be.  

I mean that, normally, I have a pile of music on the top of our upright piano (which fancily calls itself a “bungalow grand”, don’t you just love it) which is waiting for me to tackle. But I don’t. Nada. I have no new repertoire coming up (and more on that anon) so there’s nothing for me to learn.

 “To learn” has broadly two meanings for a singer. First it means to note-bash; to painstakingly work over and over on a piece until you can perform it with the score, probably for a concert. When I was younger I used to spend an awful lot less time on this process, relying far too much on the sight-reading ability I had acquired at King’s and also, I have no doubt, being an awful lot sloppier. My sight-reading has grown rusty with age and lack of use, not to mention my short-term memory, so I am a gazillion times more fastidious in my studies these days. Besides, when you are young all the repertoire is new. There’s just so much new stuff to learn. I have the luxury of revisiting old repertoire these days and can afford to spend a larger portion of my time on the new stuff, such as it is.

Also, and I’m not alone in this, I have much less trust in my brain and body than I used to. If I am not thoroughly prepared for a gig I know I will be overwhelmed with anxiety. I have lost all of the bravura and ballsiness of youth. It isn’t fun, I can tell you. I need to spend an awful lot more time in preparation so that I can feel comfortable in performance.

The second meaning of “to learn” is to memorise, which cannot be done without the first learning process; though that is a moot point, given the number of us who perform stuff from memory complete with fat fistfuls of mistakes, the result of poor preparation. The trouble is that once you’ve memorised something you’ve learned badly it is incredibly difficult to correct the errors.

Memorising is a fantastically boring process that is also becoming increasingly difficult as I get older. I can still remember huge chunks of roles I memorised in my twenties but something I committed to memory two years ago has all but faded into a dim mist. Getting it back is like coaxing a frightened cat out of a tree. It takes time and immense patience. As well as a tin of tuna and the fire brigade. If only. At least that would be fun.

So, I have nothing new to learn or to memorise.

I’m sure there are some people out there thinking to themselves “Well why don’t you learn a new role just for the hell of it?” Quickly stifling the voice inside me squeaking “What? Are you kidding? Unpaid?!!” (not that you’re ever paid to learn a role I might add, just to perform it) I would answer that this would be like moving to Lewes. I should explain. There’s an old superstition amongst British singers that if you seem to be “in” with the Glyndebourne Festival the last thing you should do is move to Lewes, the nearby town, because as soon as you do, Glyndebourne will stop asking you back. It’s a variation on Sod’s or Murphy’s Law. And so, as soon as you decide to learn such-and-such a role because it seems like a good thing to do you just know that you’ll never get to sing it. Well that’s my rationalisation and I’m sticking to it. Besides if I went to all the bother of learning a role I’m not booked to sing, the chances are that by the time I ambooked to sing it I will have forgotten the damn thing and it will all have been a colossal waste of time that I could have better spent doing something else. Like writing this blog! See?! Wouldn’t that be a terrible price to pay?

Or it could be that I’m just far too lazy. And if this whole hour spent composing this post has done anything at all, it has now given me the idea that I should really prove myself wrong.

I have everything to learn.

I was back in my old alma mater yesterday, King’s College Cambridge, singing in the Chapel. I think I may have finally conquered the fear that overwhelms me whenever I start to sing in the place, but I’m not sure. It’s a fear rooted in my first ever experience of singing under it’s famous fan-vaulted ceiling.
It was September 1975 and I was seventeen. I had applied for a Choral Scholarship to King’s which, if I was successful, would get me a place in the choir the following academic year. I was desperate to get into King’s. Nowhere else would do, but the system was that you listed in order of preference which other colleges you would also like to consider. Such was the rivalry between King’s and St John’s that if you put either of them second you could forget it altogether. They weren’t prepared to be anybody’s back-up.
What I didn’t know then was that the Choral Scholarship also guaranteed a place in the University without the need to sit the entrance exam that I was currently cramming for, not too successfully.
The selection process was pretty tough. All the applicants descended on Cambridge for two days and were put up in college rooms. The first round, the one I actually dreaded most, was where you were sent into a small auditorium and were made to sight-read in front of all the choral directors. The ability to read well was key as the top choirs covered a lot of repertoire and there wasn’t enough rehearsal time to cope with stragglers. I was crap at reading which I blame squarely on poor education in that department in my early years.
After the first round a list went up of who was through to round two and who could go home. Despite having made a hash of my sight-reading they let me through.
The next round the next day involved singing an aria in either St John’s or King’s or both. I had to do both, St John’s first. All the candidates sat in a line on a pew, and one by one we got up and did our party piece. Mine was a Handel aria. Various choir masters were dotted around each chapel, mostly looking pretty bored. We were all incredibly nervous.
Half an hour after my St John’s audition (which wouldn’t have been in my case for St John’s itself, as I’d nailed my colours to the King’s mast, but which was for any other colleges that might be interested) I was down the road in the choir stalls of King’s waiting my turn. I sang my aria in this wonderful building that I already loved with a teenage passion, and when I finished, thought “that’s it, nothing more to do”, when Philip Ledger the King’s Organist announced he was worried about my sight-reading and wanted me to have another go at it. Oh crap. He handed me a copy of some Magnificat or something, told the organist to start from such-and-such a bar and off I went. And when I say off, I mean it. I hadn’t a clue. Not only that but all the other candidates were still sitting there watching me melt into a pool of humiliated goo. I think I remember wanting to jump into the Cam and drown.
When I’d finished wrecking the brief piece of Howells (I’m pretty sure it was Howells), Ledger said I could go but to wait outside. So I walked out in a state of despondency. He’d found me out. I was a fraud.
A few minutes later he came out of the chapel and told me that he was giving me the scholarship. He said my voice was “terrific but for God’s sake go away and learn how to sight-read”.

Despite the happy ending, it’s always been the seventeen year old in me who turns up first when I’ve gone back to sing as a soloist. “This is it,” he tells me, “this is the moment they find out you really are a fraud.” If I’m lucky I’ve been able to shut him up, but not always. Yesterday I actually felt too old to be putting up with that shit anymore. But that’s not to say he won’t put in another appearance sometime.

The weather was warm and gorgeous yesterday and it reminded me of a tour of Japan when I was in the King’s Choir. We used to sing concerts in our cassocks, worn over white shirts with college ties, trousers and black shoes. The boys had to wear their Eton collars.
It was August and unbearably hot and humid, and back in the 70s air-conditioning was not so common, even in Japan. One night the heat was awful and the men went onstage looking angelic as we always did in our red cassocks, but underneath none of us was wearing any trousers. We were wearing underpants though.

I had my first full “In Tune” experience today. For those who don’t know, it’s a two hour show on Radio 3, the BBC’s classical radio channel, which highlights concerts and musical events which are coming up in the music calendar. Every day they have some guests who perform live in the studio.

I say my full experience because I have been on the show before but then all I had to do was chat about the St Matthew Passion from a studio in Bath. We were promoting a performance with The Bach Choir and luckily they already had a tape of a broadcast performance we had done a couple of years beforehand. I sat alone at the other end of an ISDN line while in Broadcasting House in London Sean Rafferty, the host, fired me questions over the ether and we listened to bits of the tape.

Today I was helping to plug a concert I’m doing in Cambridge on Friday – the rarely-performed “Golgotha” by Frank Martin – so I had to take a train up to London, rehearse with a pianist, hang about, do a sound check, hang around some more and then, well, go for it. It’s an exhausting business this promotion lark.

I wasn’t alone. Our soprano Ailish Tynan, and mezzo Sue Bickley (an avid reader of this blog as it turns out. Hi Sue!) were in on the act too, each of us with bleeding chunks to contribute. The difficulty was that none of us has performed the piece before and though we’re all prepared, we haven’t done any proper rehearsals yet, despite Sean Rafferty saying on air that we had. We do that on Thursday. So our knowledge of the piece as a whole is confined to our stuff and not much more. None of us, apart from the conductor, had got a handle on the entire oeuvre and yet we had to go on the radio and sell it.

The concert will also be broadcast on Radio 3 so this was our chance to tickle the taste buds of the potential listener so that he’d eschew all the other distractions on offer on Good Friday evening and tune their dials to us instead. It’s a tough sell and we did our bit, spouting enthusiasm from every pore. Sue was so enthusiastic that during my stint of being interviewed (about which I can remember practically nothing) she hurled a plastic cup across the live studio. Well that’s how it sounded as I struggled to find a cohesive argument for a piece of which I am familiar only in bits. I think perhaps that in her relief at being done she just dropped the cup, but I like to think of her chucking it in a fabulous display of upstaging.

The studio is a grim environment in which to sing – acoustically dry and unforgiving, though I think (and hope) they add a bit of flattering reverb in the mixing booth. More unnerving perhaps is the immediate presence of your conductor and colleagues who have nothing better to do than listen to you from only a few feet away.

The odd and surprisingly pleasant thing is that it feels as if we’ve got the hard bit out of the way. Friday’s performance may well feel like a walk in the park compared to the scrutiny we’ve faced today. Well, you can but wish.

Scene: a crowded cafe in Newcastle.
Bob looks around the room, waits for me to take a sip of coffee, then says at the top of his voice : “SO CHRIS, IS YOUR BROTHER GAY LIKE YOU?”

Scene: Durham Cathedral, packed for a concert. Bob is the conductor. Tonight is the night when there are loads of simultaneous performances of the Creation taking place all over the country, in aid of the hospice movement. One of these performances is being relayed live on Radio 2 and the idea is that all the concerts will start at exactly the same time, so while we wait on the podium the radio relay is being fed directly through the cathedral’s tannoy system. A cheery Radio 2 announcer is describing the scene in detail and the plan is that he’ll give a countdown to the opening downbeat, at which point the tannoy will be silenced and we’ll start. Bob, next to me, is fidgety.
Announcer “And now coming on to the platform are tonight’s soloists, Helen Screechy, soprano, (I’ve obviously changed the names to protect the real, well-known singers) Justin Yelp, tenor, and finally David Strained, bass. They have rehearsed this afternoon and I can tell you they are in fine voice… ”
Bob turns to me, baton poised, and says really rather loudly: “WELL LOVE, THAT MAKES A CHANGE!”

I posted this one on Facebook but it’s my favourite and it shows Bob’s wisdom to perfection.
A very well known bass said to Bob “My ambition is to be the best bass in the world.”
Bob: “That’s lovely. How will you know?”

A story Bob Tear told about himself:

Bob sang the Verdi Requiem only once in his life, in unusual circumstances, when he was quite young. “Once was enough, love.”

Bernstein was conducting it at the Royal Albert Hall and Carlo Bergonzi was due to be the tenor soloist but fell ill. Bob was called in at very short notice and being the consummate musician, pretty-well sight-read it.

At the end of the concert, in full view of the audience, Bernstein grabbed Bob’s face in both hands and planted an open-mouthed kiss full on Bob’s lips. Then as they were taking their bows Bernstein, holding Bob’s hand, turned to him and said:

“You know, if you had a proper high B flat you’d have one of the great tenor voices of the world… Bad luck!”

A neighbour of ours died last week and his widow asked me to sing something at his memorial next Friday. It’s always very hard to choose something for these occasions and I suggested Britten’s arrangement of “The Salley Gardens”. It’s short, it’s beautiful and it’s ripe with poignancy. The last time I sang it was just over two years ago in the dining hall of King’s College Cambridge, my old alma mater, at a dinner to raise money from fellow Kingsmen. It was a great evening. Philip Ledger accompanied me and amongst the diners were Stephen Cleobury (the College Organist), David Willcocks, and Bob Tear with his wife Hilary.

It was the last time I saw Bob and today I learned that he has just died.

Like so many tenors of my generation I grew up with Bob’s recordings. He represented a new vigour in English singing that made a break with the immediate past and that enormous influence that Peter Pears had wielded for so long. Where Pears gave refinement and, I dare say it, a certain prissiness, Bob was gutsy and visceral. Well that’s how he seemed to me and I loved it. Bob’s was the first recording of “The Salley Gardens” that I heard and owned, and it was always my favourite. The emotion was real, the picture vivid and alive.

So to have him listen to me do it, to have him hug me later and say nice things… today means more to me than I can possibly share.

I first met Bob at King’s in the late 70s when he was in the chapel making one of his many recordings. I was going to the RCM after I graduated and I hoped he would teach me. A few weeks later I went around to his house, then in Holland Park, so that he could give me a lesson by way of audition. I remember my hands quivering with nerves as we had coffee (“Oh I’m just as bad love, look at mine go!) and then he led me down to his garage – it was a modern townhouse – where he had a rather dilapidated upright, and we sang through the Britten Serenade. Bob was a very good pianist who could play anything I put in front of him. He used my vocal score and gave me his miniature score to read. Over the notes of the opening horn solo he had pencilled a text that he and the horn-player Barry Tuckwell had dreamed up as a piss-take on Aldeburgh sensibilities. I won’t repeat it all but it started “I like boys. I like small boy’s bottoms…” And that was my proper introduction to Bob. He felt the music intensely but he loved to laugh and be irreverent too.

Bob taught me for two years at the RCM. His heart wasn’t in teaching technique – something I think he found pretty dull. He wanted to develop the human, the spiritual – the real musician. He gave me, as I’m sure he gave so many, a copy of Alan Watts’ “The Wisdom of Insecurity” – a brilliant insight into what I suppose you could call Western Zen – as well as books of poems by his beloved Traherne. He took me to art galleries (often with a purchase in mind) and gave me tips on racehorses. We drank beer at lunchtime and talked about love. He was a mentor in the true sense of the word.

When I got good enough, he gave me jobs. I jumped in for him on several occasions and he used to recommend me for things he couldn’t do or didn’t want to do. The last of these was last year when he suggested me for a recording of a piece that had been written for him. I stupidly never rang him to thank him.

He conducted me a few times. We did the Britten Serenade together, during which he would mutter encouraging things (“Marvellous darling, marvellous!”), and “The Creation” in Durham Cathedral, where he introduced me to the choir and orchestra by saying I was going to be singing the part of Urinal.

We took to writing to each other, often immensely long ramblings on spirituality, and when he finally got a fax machine (he was no technophile, always writing in longhand and never as far as I know touching a computer. He also couldn’t drive) we engaged for a while on an idea of his where we would write alternate chapters of a book. It didn’t work. His prose was always much more fantastical and elaborate than mine and leapt into realms of spiritual ecstasy (all that Traherne you see…) which sat uncomfortably with my more down-to-earth efforts.

We only appeared in one opera together simultaneously, and that was “Sir John in Love” at ENO, five years ago. It was a wonderful show to be in, with an extraordinary cast, and Bob gave it his all, but I believe his heart wasn’t in singing any more. He was much more interested in painting and writing, and he found singing physically exhausting.

There’s so much more I wish I could have shared with Bob. If ever I found myself down in the dumps about anything, I knew I could go to him for a few pints and some solid spiritual counselling.

But now he’s gone. To quote The Salley Gardens: “…I was young and foolish and now am full of tears.”