“I was by no means always an opera fan, and it was the singing that got me in the end. My grandmother and parents had taken me to see a couple of productions when I was younger in the hope of firing some latent interest, but it didn’t really grab me. Then, one day in my 20s, I heard a CD of my wife’s of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. I had no story to go on, no costumes, no set, no visuals at all, just a series of the most extraordinary voices singing insanely beautiful music. Hooked, I was. So hooked that all these years later I practically begged Glyndebourne to let me help present this weekend’s inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup competition for young singers.”