Jeremy Peaker Bass

How long have you been a member of Opera North and how did you get involved?
I’ve been with the company from 1988 on and off. Aida was my first show and I became a full time member of the chorus in March 1995. I was working for the National Coal Board as a Colliery Stores Manager when I decided to get some opinions on my voice. My Auntie worked with Jane Bonner's mother and Jane arranged for me to meet John Pryce Jones who was Chorus Master at the time in 1984. John said I should go to music college and then come back and see him. Well after music college I came back and was given Extra Chorus work. I freelanced quite a lot in this period and from 1988 to 1995 I was in a major tour of Chess the musical for two years and I was a founder member of the New D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for two years, I did many solo roles for smaller companies untill I joined the Opera North company full time in 1995.

Where are you from originally?
I’m originally from Shepley near Hudderfield but moved to Barnsley when I was 10. I hated it at first but would now consider, after 36 years, Barnsley as my home and place I want to be.

How old where you when you started to sing and why?
When I was a boy in Shepley my parents had always been told by Mr Robinson from the Sunday School that I had a good boy treble voice but I never did anything with it. I started to sing as a boy treble when I was around 13 because my piano teacher Gordon Pearce heard me sing one day and thought I ought to enter some local music festivals. When I was 14 I won the rose bowl cup at Pontefract music festival with Lonely Woods by Lully and was asked to sing it in the evening festival final concert, but my voice literally broke at tea time that day and I couldn’t sing a note. I was so upset and didn’t sing again till I was 17

Did you always plan to sing?
No not at all. I liked piano lessons but like most youngsters the practice in between them was a chore and a bore. I think I nearly drove my piano teacher to despair and I owe him so much. Gordon Pearce - now head of music for North Yorkshire Education Authority - managed to get me through O-Level music after which I nearly did go to Huddersfield College of Music to study piano when I left school. I wanted to study Percussion but my headmaster and the woman who came to see me about going said that I couldn’t and had to study piano and bassoon, so that was an end to that. I said I wouldn’t go and got into terrible trouble with my school headmaster for defying him.

Gordon stuck with me and when the voice started to come back he began to give me lessons. I was now working at the colliery and joined a junior Gilbert and Sullivan society in Barnsley (ironically a Society that has spawned many professional singers), Huddersfield Choral Society and South Yorkshire Opera. It was not until the miners strike of 1984 that I decided to approach colleges to see if I was good enough to go. Encouraged by Gordon Pearce I got scholarships at three colleges and chose Guildhall in London. It was a big wrench after eight years to leave a secure job (or so we thought) and take up a new profession at 24 which may have failed but I've never regretted it or looked back. It was the best thing that happened to me.

Where did you train?
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with my wonderful teacher Noelle Barker OBE.

What are your favourite operas?
I have so many for so many different reasons. I love the big Verdi Operas: Aida, Rigoletto, Otello, Nabucco, Giovanna D'Arco are so full of passion. I also love Puccini for pure romantic genius. Rosenkavalier has the best ending to an opera ever written and I can listen to that for ever and Wagner for sheer power.

However my real passion lies in the lighter repertoire: Barber of Seville, Ambrodgio was such a joy to play (no lines or notes but a steal of a role), Marriage of Figaro, Elisir D’Amore and my favourite passion of all - Operetta and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. I was able to play the roles I love for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and at the Savoy so I can say I am a true Savoyard.

What are your favourite venues and why?
Having done many tours in my career with other companies as well as Opera North, my favourite venue is Birmingham Hippodrome because it's such a well run theatre. However I do tour with my own company and favourites are some of the smaller theatres because they are so friendly: Whitley Bay Playhouse, Darlington Civic, Richmond Theatre Royal in North Yorkshire, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Blackpool Grand, Lowestoft Marina, to name a few.

What hobbies do you have outside singing/playing?
I operate my own company (Much Loved Productions Ltd) providing one night concerts throughout Britain, which I started in 1994 and has gone from strength to strength. We now have our own orchestra The British Philharmonic Concert Orchestra (Musical Director is Tony Kraus, the ex-Chorus Master of Opera North) and provide concerts from large orchestral to small two-man shows, using some of the best talents in the UK in their field. It’s a constant thrill to me to see a good concert come together and watch an audience enjoying the experience.

Other hobbies include sci-fi, especially Dr Who ( I know, I’m a big kid), and I like nice cars and reading biographies.

Do you teach or have any other job?
My other job is MD of Much Loved Productions Ltd. I have taught in the past but it was unrewarding at the time, I taught someone who just didn’t want to learn and didn’t want to work at it (I got my come uppance there from not doing piano practice for my teacher when a teenager) so I've not returned to it.

Who are your musical/theatrical idols?
I'm not really a typical opera singer so I can’t say I was really inspired by anyone as a singer. I don’t get too worked up about other people in the profession. I love Pavarotti and Sutherland but I also enjoy Meat Loaf and Queen. Although I listen to Classic FM, I also like Radio 2. I'm happy for anyone that gets on and up the ladder in this industry as I know how hard it is. I just hope when they do get there they remember where they came from and encourage others on the way up.

I think there are geniuses like Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini and Rossini, but I love Gilbert and Sullivan, Lehar, Strauss, (did I say Gilbert and Sullivan) Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Sigmund Romberg, Edward German and of course Gilbert and Sullivan I suppose. I do like Renato Bruson as a Baritone singer. I don’t really favour the higher voices that much, I prefer to hear the lower voices.

I much prefer comedy to serious opera as the comic operas are so much fun.
I love comedy in all walks of life. I'm particularly fond of quirky speciality acts, odd acts that you can’t see anywhere else and that are a peculiar and unique skill. I love ventriloquist acts - what a skill that is. I think I was born too late as I love variety theatre and there’s something so skilful about it that’s lost today. Slapstick is such fun, again another dying art I think as comedy today is too politically correct and vulgar. There’s something innocent about the greats Morecambe and Wise, Norman Wisdom, Ronnie Barker, Rob Wilton, Les Dawson, and the wonderful Tommy Cooper and Larry Grayson (The Generation Game was never as good).

I love sit-coms with real slapstick feel about them and double entendre - Keeping Up Appearances, Are You Being Served, Frank Spencer and the like.

What do you enjoy about being in a professional chorus?
Working with my fellow choristers. They are incredibly hard working people who always pull out the stops to make the show happen. They make it look so easy but there’s a lot of real hard work going on on the stage. They are so versatile as a chorus, and can adapt and change to most styles really easily, I know they are well respected by the directors who work with them and that’s what makes it worthwhile - to know you are part of a respected team.

In your time with Opera North you must have enjoyed some funny moments?
There have been so many and I suppose most of them you needed to be there. Some are unrepeatable. My friend Anthony Baines Davis, who sadly died last year, probably provided most of them. Tony was always a joker and a fantastic impressionist. ‘Never let him have the beret’ was a note on wardrobe files or Frank Spencer would be in the production. There was a time when he managed to make the whole chorus laugh when he walked behind a wall on stage and made it look as though he was going down some stairs and disappeared, although the stage was flat. Anthony always sang the line Billy’s A Stammer in Billy Budd with his hand to his mouth and in the voice of Zippy from Rainbow.

When I was playing Ambrodgio in Barber of Seville and Gary Magee was playing Figaro, Little Britain had just come out and Gary was dressed in disguise in women’s clothing in the scene. As he entered I said to him ‘But I'm A Lady!’ Poor Gary corpsed terribly.

Peter Field who played Parpinol on roller skates in La Boheme hit a nail while skating towards the wings and made a rather undignified exit. I was a spear carrier in Giovanna D'Arco and was at the front of the stage. Philip Prowse, the director and a really lovely man, asked me to move a little to the right, which I did. After about two minutes he asked me to move a little further to the right, again I did. Another two minutes went by and he asked me to move a little further to the right at which point I was very close to the wings. After another couple of minutes he said, ‘Jeremy could you please just bugger off the stage?’ I complied, it was very funny. There are lots more but they are not really repeatable.

Jeremy Peaker in The Marriage of Figaro.

Posted 16th July, 2007.

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