Alfie Read online

  I had an accident on Kismet that, looking back, was a foreshadowing of what was to come the next year with ENO and The Pearl Fishers, the near drowning–near blindness incident. Every night in Kismet I stepped through a hole in the curtain to make my exit. But because the crew had gone out drinking one afternoon for some leaving do, the stage manager accidentally gave a cue for the curtain to go up just as I was stepping through it and it whipped me up about 4ft and spun me back, I crashed down onto the platform on my back. Nobody came over to see if I was alright, nobody seemed bothered.

  The one wonderful thing to come out of that whole fiasco was that I got to work with the late Richard Hickox. Richard was a conductor, very well established, a legend in the business, and working with him was wonderful – he was really nice to get to know and to hang out with, and he offered me a job at Sydney Opera House to play Albert Herring; he was musical director there. The people at Sydney Opera House wanted to use an Australian, one of their own, but Richard was fighting to use European singers where he could. Then he had a heart attack and died. I was really saddened by that, really shocked. He was the best thing about Kismet for me, and I’d go through it all again to have that experience with him again.

  That year I was made an ambassador of The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts, which gives opportunities to kids that wouldn’t otherwise have them, to inspire and encourage them. I was amazed. I think Prince Charles is a superb ambassador for this country – his charity work is incredible – so to get that accolade and to be involved with that was a big deal for me; it still is. As part of my work for them I got to sing on the ice rink at Blackpool Pleasure Beach with the choir from St Wulstan’s, my old school, to around 1500 kids, which was really cool. I hope some of them were encouraged. Had a few dinners with Prince Charles too. There was one at Clarence House a week after I was made ambassador, with about 20 people. Neil was more nervous than I was, fumbling about everywhere – he’s like a kid in a toy shop when he goes into places like that. I try to keep as calm as I can so I can do what I have to do, and he’s just all over the place. I love it. Even the gigs we’re doing now, he just gets so excited when it comes to show time. He’s got such playful energy. Michael Fawcett, Prince Charles’s aide, gave us a talk on how to behave. Do not offer your hand until the Prince offers his hand. The first time you meet him, call him Your Royal Highness. After that, it’s Sir. I was singing and made a joke about him playing the violin after discovering the violinist was called Charlie. I inadvertently interrupted a conversation he was having with Penelope Keith for that.

  I sang at Buckingham Palace for him and the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla, that month as well, in the Throne Room. The royal gigs are always a lot of fun. In December that year I sang at the naming ceremony for Cunard’s new liner, the Queen Victoria, in Southampton dock. Charles and Camilla were there to launch the boat. I did ‘I Saw Three Ships’ and ‘Nessun Dorma’ with a couple of other tenors. Derek Jacobi was dressed as Phileas Fogg and did a talk about Cunard’s history. I’ve got his voice lodged in my brain now as well – had to listen to him forever when we had Gracie because he does the narration for In the Night Garden. ‘Where are you going, Upsy Daisy? Somebody’s not asleep! IgglePiggle’s not asleep!’ I digress.

  It was a really surreal evening on that boat, we stayed in cabins overnight. We all had dinner in the ballroom then went to check out the bars and the disco. Derek Jacobi was milling about, Moira Stewart and Carol Vorderman were there. Simon Weston, I was in awe of him, really proud to meet him. John Prescott, he’d given a little speech: ‘When I worked at C’nard . . .’ That’s how he pronounced it, C’nard. ‘I worked at C’nard as a steward, that’s how I started.’ He was alright actually, not a bad stick. We hung out with him and his wife Pauline, went to the bars and the disco with them – his dancing was something else. Everybody was getting drunk. We went into the smoking room and Jimmy Savile was there in his white tracksuit and his jingle-jangle jewellery, sitting in an armchair on his own puffing on a cigar, and it was pretty cool to meet him, having grown up watching his TV show, but pretty weird when he started flirting with Sarah. He said, ‘You’re a pretty girl aren’t you. Come and sit on my knee.’ Right in front of me! I saw him at breakfast the next morning, I said, ‘Nice to see you last night, Jimmy.’ He just sort of scowled at me.

  La Passione was released that November. Unfortunately EMI was in trouble, having lost something like £250 million the year before, and was sold to Guy Hands’s private equity company Terra Firma. Lots of their big bands and artists legged it, and poor Passione was left a little stranded, with little promotional support from them, and not much love either. They just seemed to lose interest overnight, bigger fish to fry. Neil personally invested so much in that album, they don’t even know. He had so much more passion for it than they did, so much more drive. Even before their troubles I just don’t think they believed in what we were trying to do. And even with my own misgivings about the album’s execution, it was still something I was desperate to promote, to get out there. I loved those songs and I wanted to sing them, to as many people as possible. It’s heartbreaking when even your own record company isn’t fully supporting you.

  Their apathy culminated in a real low point at the end of that year, at the Festival of Remembrance. I’ll rewind a few months because this is where Harvey Goldsmith enters proceedings like a soothsayer, an unwitting fairy godmother. I’m sure he’d rather I have him as a fairy godfather, but it’s done now. Fairy godmother it is. Harvey Goldsmith is one of Britain’s biggest music promoters, produced Live Aid, has been behind a lot of opera mega-events including The Three Tenors at Wembley Stadium and Pavarotti in Hyde Park. Earlier that year I performed at the Canary Wharf ice rink on his TV show Get Your Act Together, singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ for Opera Anywhere’s Arias on Ice event. Neil had a drink with him after the recording and Harvey, ever savvy, said, ‘Your boy’s brilliant, but he needs a song. The boy needs a song.’ Something to break me, something for people to latch on to, something I could make my own.

  Back to December at the Festival of Remembrance, which I’d been booked to sing at. Tim Marshall, the producer, ran us through his idea – footage of bodies being repatriated, of coffins arriving back, while I’m singing ‘Bring Him Home’ from Les Misérables, with one of the brass bands from the forces. Nothing twigged at first. I knew the song, but was very unsure about singing musical theatre at such a high-profile event. Tim’s idea was so touching though, and to be honest I was also at the point where I just wanted to sing something great, something that would have an impact, and Tim’s wife chose ‘Bring Him Home’ after seeing it sung at George Best’s funeral two years earlier, as his coffin was being walked up the aisle. The repatriation footage wasn’t shown in the end – they decided it wasn’t necessary, that the lyrics and the emotion would communicate the sentiment well enough without it. Also at the festival were Doug Rigby and his son, Corporal Will Rigby, whose twin brother John, serving alongside him, had died in Basra after being hit by a roadside bomb. Will had sat with him for 10 hours in the field hospital while he died, and brought the Torch of Remembrance into the Royal Albert Hall. He gave a reading before I sang, and needless to say being there with them was an incredibly moving experience. They sat behind me on stage while I performed the song, it was a very emotional moment, and ‘Bring Him Home’ was so apt for it. And singing it there, at an event that gifted it with so much poignancy, really hit me. It showed me how much it can affect people in so many different ways, how it can mean so much. And as Neil watched me sing it, mini-Harvey Goldsmith, in a little tutu, appeared in a puff of smoke above his left shoulder: ‘Boy needs a song!’ And disappeared just as instantly in another puff of smoke. And that was it. We’d found the song. Or, more to the point, the song had found us.

  So this is where Neil, emotional and excitable backstage, calls Mark Collen at EMI and says, ‘We’re 10 minutes away at the Albert Hall, Alfie’s just sung “Bring Him Home”,
this is it! I’ve recorded it, can I meet you for 10 minutes and show you the footage?’ And they said they didn’t have 10 minutes. That they weren’t particularly interested, they didn’t have the time.

  Neil was practically crying. They weren’t interested, they weren’t listening to him. He didn’t know what to do. And Neil and I were getting frustrated with each other in that period. We had some heated moments but we’d always phone each other up later. ‘You alright?’ It would never last long. The record industry was cracking at the seams at that point, and a lot of artists that were around at the same time were dropping their management like flies – first big blowout and they’d ditch them. First problem, bang, blame the manager. Find another one. But me and Neil stuck through shit and gruel, we took them all on. And I’m proud of that, and proud of our relationship, because we’ve worked so hard at it. Neil just never stops. And he will never stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  GOLDEN LIGHTS ON DARK DAYS

  We’d found out Sarah was pregnant at the end of my Kismet run. Creation amidst catastrophe. I ran around the bedroom when she got a positive on the pregnancy test, jumped up and down on the bed then got over-sensitive about it, worried that I’d hurt my pregnant wife with my exuberance. I was more sensitive about it than she was.

  The first opera I did after Kismet, in April 2009, was Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. I had a wonderful, wonderful time on that. ENO again, and the polar opposite to Kismet. John Copley’s one of my favourite opera directors to work for. He’ll stop a rehearsal and come out with these great stories, but he always gets the job done, and very well too. Working with John was fantastic. I loved every minute of that job and I got some nice reviews for it. I played Camille and knew some of the music already. Dad was a big fan of Richard Tauber, one of Lehár’s main tenors, we used to listen to him a lot at home in Fleetwood. Every Sunday we’d sit around the dinner table and Dad would put a Richard Tauber record on, take out his bottle of Benedictine and have a small glass. So I already knew a few of the duets and the waltzes – Tauber sang a number of them. It really meant a lot to me to do that opera. Not least because Roy Hudd was in it. The little cameo roles were often played by celebrities in those days; the opera houses went through a stage of doing that to sell seats. Dawn French played in La Fille du Régiment at the Royal Opera House a couple of times. And Roy Hudd was great, really solid, exactly what you’d expect if you’ve seen him on TV, great fella, full of stories. We shared a dressing room, and the only downside of it was seeing him in his underwear, he’d just come up and talk to me in his string vest and trollies. Roy, go and get dressed man! Please!

  Sarah came to see it with Neil and Jilly and decided to start having contractions in the foyer. I was told backstage. What?! No, false alarm. She waited until the next week when I was at the Classical Brits for the real thing. I was nominated for Best Male Artist and Best Album, for Onward, got a text from her in the interval: ‘Can you come home, I think it’s started.’ That’s Grace for you. Loves a bit of drama. Oh, you’re at the Brits, Daddy? Good, I think I’ll be born now. I jumped in the car with Neil, shot off to Oxford and was up all night with Sarah in hospital, poor Sarah, whose epidural was administered too late; all it gave her was one numb leg. And Gracie was born the following day, the best award I ever could have won. I realised what everything was about as soon as I saw that little girl. I thought, ‘That’s it. It’s all for her. Everything.’ Nothing compares to holding your newborn child, nothing. To have experienced the death of my father and to have held him when he died, and then to have held Gracie when she was born . . . to be hit by those two extremes, physically feeling life leave, and then feeling life arrive . . . I mean what else is there? To have had those experiences, it’s a blessing.

  Grace was a golden light on dark days. At exactly the time that she was born, EMI decided not to pick up the option on me as an artist. They’d been bought out, they were perhaps frightened of losing their jobs, perhaps frightened to take any risks, and didn’t want to spend money, obviously they didn’t believe in me enough. But it was a really heavy blow, a bitter pill. And I thought that was it, that my chances of making albums were over. Getting another deal was going to be like climbing a mountain again, I was really gutted. I carried on doing the operas and the gigs, gigging and gigging and gigging, getting out there to make money – we certainly weren’t seeing any from the albums. And we promoted them ourselves with those gigs we were getting, playing concerts and festivals around the UK: Kings Lynn, Henley, Chester, Swansea.

  A week or so after Gracie was born, in-between my final Merry Widow performances, I had the pleasure of singing at the wedding of Autumn Kelly and Peter Phillips at Windsor Castle, which was like our own bizarre episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Autumn was Michael Parkinson’s PA. I’d met her a year earlier at an ITV event I’d sung at, The Music of Morse, which he hosted. She and I had become friends and she asked me to sing at her wedding. I sat next to Kate Middleton at the reception – William was at another wedding in Kenya. She was really sweet. She asked me if I wouldn’t mind swapping my lamb with hers because hers was too big. Of course I obliged – I’d never say no to more lamb. So I ate Kate Middleton’s lamb. And she ate mine. Sarah had to go up to one of the courtrooms, and was sat on a beautiful antique four-poster bed with a breast pump for Gracie, the machine pumping milk, whirring, nnnrrr, nnnrrr, nnnrrr. We bumped into Prince Harry on the dance floor. ‘Great singing,’ he said, I think – the music was banging. I went up to Prince Philip and offered him my hand first, no, no, no, – wrong! Sorry, Sir, sorry. He said, ‘Are you the singer?’ Yes Sir, Alfie Boe. ‘Alfie Boe, of course, of course,’ and he flung his arm around me and walked me over to The Queen. ‘Darling, darling, have you met Alfie, the singer?’ Sarah called her Your Royal Highness instead of Your Majesty – we were getting everything wrong. She was lovely. She said, ‘Wonderful singing, very nice.’

  I said, ‘Thank you Ma’am. Could you hear OK?’

  She said, ‘Yes of course I could hear you.’

  I wasn’t making any sort of reference to deafness – they were in the back signing the register when I was singing and I just wasn’t sure if they could hear me properly.

  David McVicar was directing Der Rosenkavalier for the ENO, which was starting a week before Merry Widow was finishing, and I was brought in last minute because their tenor pulled out for some reason. So I did those two operas back to back, overlapping for a week or so. I was flying by the seat of my pants on that one because I’d had no rehearsal. My rehearsal process lasted 10 minutes. Literally. Then I was put in costume and make-up and practically thrown on stage. It’s not a big role, I basically had to stand at the front of the stage, sing an aria and clear off. I then did an even smaller role, in Elektra at the Royal Opera House, despite having thought that I wouldn’t be welcome there again. And it felt great to be there actually – I was pleased to be back on that stage and to be playing a role that wasn’t that high pressured. It was a foot back in the door. It was a cool little role: I just jumped out of a trap door and screamed my lungs out for 57 seconds. It’s one of the shortest roles ever written, although there’s a lot of text in those 57 seconds, a lot of high notes – it’s a highly emotional, fired piece of music. It’s a really tricky moment to get right, timing-wise; you really have to be on the ball, and Mark Elder, who was conducting, was great to work with – he really helped me through it and encouraged me.

  Then it was on to have my third stab at La Bohème, for Jonathan Miller at The Coliseum, and it was an odd one, all told. I’d first met him to discuss it back in August 2007, shortly after Kismet. I was sat in his kitchen talking about the role while he made coffee for us, then he sat opposite me, stuck his spoon in the sugar bowl, and while he was talking to me he put one spoonful of sugar after another into his coffee and just. Did. Not. Stop. ‘So, Alfie, how long have you been singing?’ One spoon. Two spoons. Three. ‘Great. And how many performances did yo
u do on Broadway?’ Four spoons. Five. Six. ‘And how was it working with Baz?’ Seven. Eight. Nine. ‘What was Baz’s approach to La Bohème?’ Ten, eleven, twelve. I think fourteen spoonfuls of sugar went into that cup of coffee. And he stirred it once, put his spoon down, and drank it, I was gobsmacked. How does he have teeth? I could barely answer him, I was so transfixed with what he was doing.

  That production was hard work. It was exciting to do it for him, but when we got on stage we realised how difficult it would be – because the set was pushed way back up, there was a hell of a lot of space to fire the music out into. We had a young conductor who was playing the orchestra far too loud, so it was like playing to a brick wall of sound, trying to fire our sound out. People said they couldn’t hear the singers. And Jonathan asked me to play Rodolfo without much sentiment and emotion. I think he wanted to try to find a new take on it, and I went with it. I tried, but I didn’t really gel with it, and a lot of people complained that Rodolfo was too cold with Mimì. So when ENO revived it a couple of years later with a different director I reverted back to the way I’d played him before, more romantically. We also had a conductor that time who knew how to play the orchestra down so we could be heard. It was a much more satisfying production.