A little Boe peep
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. …