Adam Music is a tenor in the Chorus at the Welsh National Opera, which won’t surprise anyone who remembers his singing contributions to St James productions during his school days.

Adam studied at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire for 3 years but not until 2013, 10 years after leaving school. He says, ‘I worked at a primary school for 4 years which I loved and also started busking a lot at that time which was really fun and led me to singing at events in the UK and abroad. Whilst at work I would sing for the children to introduce them to opera and classical music. It was a lot of fun but I decided I needed to get trained properly because it was really annoying not knowing how good or bad I might be.’

Luckily in his singing career a 10 year break is not a problem as tenor voices tend to mature a bit later. The Welsh National Opera is based at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff but also acts as a touring company throughout England and Wales. There are a few foreign trips planned and Adam is going to Dubai next year and possibly to the Czech Republic. Adam continues, ‘I meet some pretty inspirational people: singers, directors and conductors who have worked all over the world and I am able to work on some really elaborate sets with amazing costumes.’

At the heart of Adam’s career is his love of opera itself, and his enthusiasm shines through, ‘Singing, performing and interpreting characters are what I love doing, and I love telling people about opera because I think it’s a really misunderstood art form and, when given the opportunity, it has so much power to reach people.’

Adam definitely feels St James influenced his whole career, as he explains, ‘I owe everything to music at St James, to the fact that we were in full scale operas at 14, that’s just not done usually! I owe my career mainly to Mrs Gorman and through her I met Margaret Lobo who guided me. What Mrs Gorman did was amazing, nothing short of incredible. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that could be repeated to be honest. What other school or youth organisation would even try and put on a full blown production of ‘The Magic Flute’, uncut, and over 3 hours long with text and singing with an entire cast and orchestra made up purely of children? Everyone sang in tune and everything was of a really high standard. I was at school with some really good singers including Alison Griffin, Lilly Milligan, Jignesh Patel and Devesh Patel. It seemed to be a perfect storm of Mrs Gorman being incredibly driven and ambitious, the school supporting her and then actually having the singers to do it. I owe my success to being introduced to opera at school.’