Modern Arias

Opera singer TONY HENRY tells Northings how he plans to pursue his successful career from a base in Ross-shire

I GREW UP in London, and I have to admit that the Highlands and London could not be more different. We moved here for family reasons, and to be honest my management at the time were very against me making that move. They saw it as being the end of my career, but to be honest it has been anything but.

In fact, I think it works to my advantage if anything. The timing couldn’t really be better – Inverness is expanding, and the services from the airport are opening up. Flights are not as frequent as in London, obviously, but if I need to get down there I can book a flight the day before and fly down there in the morning, so it’s not even an issue.

Given the nature of my work, I can really be based anywhere, and I thought why not. My work is really global, but I would like to generate as much as I can up here to limit the amount of travelling I have to do. I have three children and they resent me being away. I’ve already had a concert in Strathpeffer that went well, and I just did a Christmas concert as a soloist with the Black Isle Singers in Fortrose. In February I’ll be performing in Skye.

I do a lot concerts and recitals, and I do a lot of corporate work. I still keep my hand in on full-scale opera as well, but I plan to do that on an annual basis, one big contract a year.

One reason for that is simply that I enjoy it, but I also want to keep reminding people that I still do opera – if you step away from that, people start to come up with all kinds of assumptions that usually couldn’t be further from the truth, especially if you are also perceived to have somehow moved away from the centre of things by leaving London.

If you asked me for my favourite role, I’d have to say Don José in Carmen

I didn’t start out to be an opera singer. In fact, I didn’t really start out even to be a singer. I was singing leading roles in the West End, and my aim was to be an actor who was capable of doing his own stunts – I wanted to be a film star, basically.

Singing wasn’t really on top of my list – my voice had always helped me get some attention, but taking singing to the level where I am now was never really part of the plan. Basically I just wanted to capitalise on what was at my disposal, but I wasn’t planning on being a singer at that point.

What then happened was that I landed a role as Joe in a production of ‘Carmen Jones’, and everybody said to me that I should consider opera, because I had the voice for it, and people felt that I had the potential for a good career in it. I didn’t really know a lot about opera at that point, but I figured well, this is an opportunity to earn more money.

I quickly realised that when you enter a profession as exacting as opera then it isn’t that simple – I had come from musicals and I was pretty much starting from scratch, which was a real shock for me. I’ve been singing opera for eleven years now, and I would say without reservation that it is easily the most difficult thing I have ever taken on.

I’ve sang pretty much all the leading romantic roles for tenor – Rodolfo in ‘La Boheme’, Alfredo in ‘La Traviata’, Radames in ‘Aida’, Canio in ‘Pagliacci’. If you asked me for my favourite role, I’d have to say Don José in ‘Carmen’. Emotionally it is the most rewarding, I find, and makes the biggest vocal demand on me as well. The story has so much pathos and romance, and it is also one of the most popular and most performed operas.

We tried something different with a recording I made in 2003, called ‘Modern Arias’, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It came about when a couple of record producers heard me literally singing for my supper – I was between jobs and singing at a restaurant in Covent Garden.

I quickly realised that when you enter a profession as exacting as opera then it isn’t that simple – I had come from musicals and I was pretty much starting from scratch, which was a real shock for me. I’ve been singing opera for eleven years now, and I would say without reservation that it is easily the most difficult thing I have ever taken on.

I’ve sang pretty much all the leading romantic roles for tenor – Rodolfo in ‘La Boheme’, Alfredo in ‘La Traviata’, Radames in ‘Aida’, Canio in ‘Pagliacci’. If you asked me for my favourite role, I’d have to say Don José in ‘Carmen’. Emotionally it is the most rewarding, I find, and makes the biggest vocal demand on me as well. The story has so much pathos and romance, and it is also one of the most popular and most performed operas.

We tried something different with a recording I made in 2003, called ‘Modern Arias’, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It came about when a couple of record producers heard me literally singing for my supper – I was between jobs and singing at a restaurant in Covent Garden.
They were struck by the fact that I happened to be black, which I almost took offence at, but they were genuinely surprised to hear me, and felt that it was a big selling point. They hadn’t really encountered a black opera singer before, and when they came and saw me again in a show, they assumed I’d be part of the chorus, and couldn’t believe I was one of the leads.

They were basically looking for something new, and I was it. I think they thought all their Christmases had come at once, basically, and through them I landed a record deal.

The idea of the album was basically to take contemporary pop songs like ‘Deliliah’ and ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Yesterday’ and sing them in Italian. The idea was to give them an operatic feel, but without taking away from the basic integrity of the song. One concern was that people wouldn’t recognise them if we changed them too much, so we worked hard to retain the essential feel of the original.

When the album was released I think it confused a lot of people, and they weren’t quite sure how to deal with it. The climate has changed now – you have a band like Il Divo, who have basically copied the concept, and I think people are more willing to embrace the idea now.

I’m in the middle of recording a new concept for another album just now, and we’ll be looking at getting a major label to pick it up. That’s all under negotiation just now, and I don’t want to say anything at this stage about the idea we are working on, because I don’t want anybody else muscling in on it! All I’ll say is that it is once again bringing two musical cultures together. I’m pretty excited about it, and also about the people I’m working with.

(Tony Henry spoke to Kenny Mathieson)

© Kenny Mathieson, 2005

Related links

• Tony Henry website