Arwel Price has always sung. Growing up in the Brecon Beacons of South Wales, he won several national competitions as a boy soprano and performed in BBC concerts and Christmas specials. In his late teens, his voice broke. "I didn't know what would happen and whether I would have a good singing voice at the end of it. So I put all my enthusiasm into the piano." He went to St John's College in York to play piano, but won a scholarship bursary to sing as a tenor at York Minster and became a choral scholar at the college. His teachers at York encouraged him to take singing as his main study.

During his time in York , he was asked to sing as an extra chorister in the Opera North production of Aïda . "It was my first big job" After his degree, he did two years of postgraduate study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He returned to Opera North as an additional chorister from 1988-93, then moved on to take a job in The Phantom of the Opera. “I was a ‘swing' in Phantom, which means I covered the whole show. If anyone male was off, I had to fill in the gaps – whether it was dialogue, dancing, singing, whatever.”

He spent two years with Phantom in Manchester and another year in Edinburgh before taking a six-month contract in the West End . In 1997, the first tenor vacancy in seventeen years opened up in the Chorus of Opera North, and Arwel took the job.

His favourite operas are “the big ones! - Berlioz and Wagner are my favourites, and I loved Djamileh, Boris Godunov and Peter Grimes”. He has sung several roles onstage with Opera North, including Remendado in Carmen and Third Jew in Salome. He is also an organist for St Mary's Church in Gomersal, and he continues to give solo performances in concerts and oratorios. When he's not singing Arwel is an avid genealogist, a keen gardener and antiques collector/restorer. “My next project is to restore a harp I've found, get it back into working order and learn how to play it.”

Left, Arwel at the piano and right, as Remendado in Carmen for Opera North.

You can also view past profiles from 2004 onwards in our Singer Profiles Archive.