Tenor adds doctorate to his achievements

1:24pm Thursday 31st July 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

LAST year Herefordshire tenor Ian Storey took centre stage as Wagner’s Tristan to open the season at Milan’s La Scala, one of the most prestigious events in the opera calendar.

The event was filmed and shown widely around Europe, though not, until recently, in the UK.

But that changed a couple of weeks ago when Ian was invited by Phoenix Arts Centre in Leicester to go to a screening of the film and to take part in a Q&A session afterwards.

“It will be strange to see it,” he said as he prepared for the trip. “I’ve not seen my performance before.”

The screening was one of two unexpected events in an increasingly busy life – the second being the award of an honorary doctorate for outstanding achievement in opera from his alma mater, Loughborough University.

“I was very moved,” said Ian. “It’s not the first thing I’ve been given, but it’s the first big public thing I’ve been awarded.”

Comparing notes with a friend who has a doctorate earned in the traditional way, “I told him I’d worked 17 years for mine, longer than he did for his.”

Such is Ian’s growing reputation that opera houses are now asking him what he would like to do, with La Scala adding Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes for him.

Next February, when Ian performs in the revival of Tristan at the Milan opera house, its 100th performance there, he will achieve the distinction of being the tenor who has sung the role most often.

And when he opens the season again in 2011, singing Otello, he will be the only Englishman ever to open La Scala twice in a leading role.

Looking further ahead still to 2012/13, the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, Ian will be singing Siegfried in both Siegfried and Gotterdamerung in Berlin Staatsoper and La Scala.