Alfie Boe is looking forward to catching up and performing with Olivia Newton John at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: John Fotiadis Source: The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph reports
If anyone is a walking example of the repercussions of speaking your mind to the media, it's Alfie Boe.
The opera singer caused classical music aficionados to recoil in horror last year when he remarked to Desert Island Discs on the UK's Radio 4 that he found opera "boring" and never went to see it.
"Boe bites the hand that feeds him!" screamed The Independent. "Should Alfie Boe be knocking the business that made him?" asked the UK's The Daily Telegraph.
Overnight, the softly spoken tenor from Lancashire became opera's Bad Boy, a moniker that, much to Boe's amusement, has stuck.
"I've always been a bit different than your run-of-the-mill opera singer, but being bad? Yeah, that was new," he jokes, pulling an uncomfortable face before bursting into laughter.
Despite having flown long-haul to Sydney a mere 16 hours ago, Boe is in fine spirits, joking with the photographer and mock-covering his face when a magpie swoops dangerously low to his head ("I was dive-bombed by a bat last night," he says. "It got so close to me I could see its horrible little red eyes and smell its breath").
Even Olivia Newton-John - the reason for his visit to Australia (they are performing with the Sydney Symphony over three nights this week) - isn't spared a gag.
"I'm going to give her my room key and just say, 'You know, if you're feeling bored or something like that, come up to my room and we'll see what kind of duet we can come up with!' " he says with a grin.
It seems Boe has waggish repartee for every question shot his way except, unsurprisingly, his Radio 4 confession. Doesn't he find it a bit odd - a classically trained opera singer professing a disinterest in his profession?
"I'm an opera singer and I trained as an opera singer and, yes, I find watching opera boring," he says frankly.
"I love performing opera and I love listening to it at home but watching a production drives me crazy. I get so bored."
Despite this (or perhaps because of it?) Boe, whose first leading role was in Baz Luhrmann's Broadway adaptation of La Boheme 10 years ago, has never been more in demand.
His second studio album Alfie just went platinum, he's singing with Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert in London in June, and he has a cult following on YouTube, thanks to a series of homemade videos he and mate Matt Lucas (of Little Britain fame) posted of themselves singing to musical soundtracks in Lucas' kitchen.
"He's got this amazing voice, which no one really knows about,"Boe says.
"I lived with him for a while, so I got to know him really well and he's just like part of the family now."
Olivia Newton-John And The Sydney Symphony, Sydney Opera House; March 1-3, 8pm, $35-$149, 9250 7777, sydneyoperahouse.com
No comments:
Post a Comment