Much-vaunted British tenor Alfie (formerly Alfred) Boe was on Desert Island Discs this morning. When asked why he hadn’t chosen any opera for his favourite recordings, he replied that he doesn’t watch or listen to opera. “It’s not my world. When I’m up there performing it, that’s my world,” he sniffed. And why doesn’t he like to join the audience? “It bores me stiff.”

This seems to me to display incredible contempt for the thousands of people whom he expects to pay good money to see him perform operas. It also suggests that he engages with opera in a fantastically limited way. In other words, he likes a good sing in front of an adoring public, and he may be very good at it, but in terms of understanding the emotional effect that opera can have on those watching, the point at which the theatrical can touch the spiritual, this he doesn’t seem to understand. And knowing that about him will, I fear, make it harder for me to respond to him as a performer. 

Later in the same interview he admitted that part of his young singers’ course at the Royal Opera was – shock, horror! – to go and watch operas at Covent Garden. And how did he respond to this magnificent opportunity? He would, he said with a giggle, take a pillow with him, find an empty box and lie down on the floor to sleep. Classy.

So now we know. I for one will think twice the next time I see that he wants me to shell out to see him do opera.