After all those moody photographs of myself that I uncovered this week, I thought I would redress the balance with this decidedly cheerful one. This was the wolf as an enthusiastic wolfling taken around the time that he was studying singing at the Royal Academy Of Music in London. I obviously thought neckerchiefs were the latest thing in chic. Well, humour me, I was a tenor and I had to struggle to retain that look of egotistical superficiality. Actually, as you can probably tell from the photograph, it wasn’t much of a struggle.
I had to sing a lot of stuff that I didn’t immediately enjoy too, I loved doing Mozart, Handel, Schubert, Schumann and Donizetti but I was less enthusiastic about singing songs by English Edwardian composers like Roger Quilter. I made the break-though though in the end and now I love these songs. “Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal” moved up in my estimation no end after several disputes with my singing teacher about my audible embarrassment over the word “bosom.” Well, for God’s sake, I thought, whilst I’m singing this, The Beatles are singing “All You Need Is Love”. She shouted at me once, “Can’t you see it is all about sex?” Now I find a romantic thrill in both approaches. Mercifully there is no recording of my version of “Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal” so you will have to listen to this instead: