After giving up his pre-Covid medical career in a bid to make a name for himself in the world of opera, Alex returned to work as a doctor when the pandemic ended all opportunities for opera. He was on A&E when someone asked him what else he would do. He showed them – and the clip went viral. Standing tall in his scrubs and a face mask, he sang Nessun Dorma – and soon found himself on just about every news channel you could name. He is now back in the opera world and can’t wait to deliver his tribute to Lanza in Stedham.

Alex graduated in 2014 and worked as a doctor for two years, but when he realized during his training that he couldn’t pursue the cello at the level he wanted, he opted for singing instead thinking – wrongly – that it would be less work than the cello. He auditioned for a scholarship with the Birmingham City Symphony Orchestra Choir: “I had my first lesson and my teacher told me I should quit medicine and become an opera singer. I thought that was really bad advice! I certainly wasn’t immediately convinced but it planted a seed in my mind. But when I first tasted opera, I was absolutely seduced. I started talking to people who worked as opera singers to get their advice and they told me that most people don’t start an opera career until they are in their early 30s and suggested I continue my medical training until then – which made it easier to convince my parents!

“So I was doing a lot of opera alongside my medicine but it was opera that was the end goal. I graduated in 2014 and wanted to save some money. My first job as a doctor was in North East London. I worked there for two years and it was pretty full. It was the first time in a few years that I didn’t have time to sing and it just sucked. J I was depressed. My contemporaries who were singing full time were starting to get along very well and that’s when I applied to the Royal Academy of Music to do their opera school. was three years old and I qualified in 2019 – which was pretty bad timing I was extremely lucky that when I left I had a year of work in my log which is a rare thing when you’re out of college but i only had a few months and then it all stopped in march 2020 due to the pandemic i was going to make my debut s in the US and I had work in France and all that went away so I thought I should go back to my medical work. There was a call for people to come back and I started doing a few shifts on A&E when all the Covid cases came in. And that’s when someone asked me what else I would do and I said I was working as an opera singer. I sang – and the thing went viral. This allowed me to be interviewed on all the news channels in the world for a few months. When I wasn’t working, I was doing interviews on my laptop! »

Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk.