From Harvey and the Wallbangers to Covent Garden: Christopher Purves interviewed

One of ‘the great operatic artists of the present’ sips coffee in his quiet Oxford kitchen. The artist is Christopher Purves, the description Michael Tanner’s (Arts, 13 March). In recent years, Purves’s fluid, eloquent baritone and considered acting have received rolling acclaim: Glyndebourne, La Scala, Teatro Real Madrid; Falstaff, Mephistopheles, Beckmesser and more. This year has seen his psychotic Protector in Written on Skin at Covent Garden, and now Walt Disney in Philip Glass’s The Perfect American at English National Opera.

But first we talk about his children, whose pictures mosaic the kitchen cabinets, and mine. Purves is my cousin Edwina’s husband, and my son Benedict’s godfather. Over 20-odd years, from the couple’s Stoke Newington flat to this Oxford house, in pubs, family parties and backgarden football games, he has remained the same effusive, funny man; an energising, affectionate presence but who, thick-set as a prop forward, drives himself hard.

After King’s College, Cambridge (a choral scholar, he read English), he joined Harvey and the Wallbangers, the mid-Eighties, Albert Hall-packing pop eccentrics. Then Purves began his determined journey to La Scala et al, taking singing lessons paid for by performing in early-music ensembles.

‘I love the perfect pop song that takes three minutes to unfold, develop and go back into its shell.’ He closes his hand. ‘But opera has everything you could want.’ He opens it. ‘Pop music wasn’t on a big enough scale.’ It gave him one crucial insight, though. ‘The audience come not to pillory, they want you to do well. A lot of performers think the audience is 2,000 critics and it’s not. I feel very happy on stage, probably happier than in most social contexts, because I’ve learnt it’s safe.’