I hasten to add only 200 yards up the road from where I'm now living, used to be Fairlight Hospital and I was born there on the 4-12-1941; and of course I'm only living 200 yards down the road, so I haven't come very far in the world! My parents were both very musical. Mum had a particularly fine voice, which probably would have earned her a living if she hadn't been seeking a living during the depression years, which was difficult for everybody involved. My father was an intensely fine judge of good singing.

My sister, who's ten years older then I, was actually a ballerina with the Australian National Ballet and went to London and joined the London Festival and then Ballet One there and then like myself went into a couple of musicals. In her case it was Can Can by Cole Porter and Pajama Game. Then she was married and had her children and both her children are involved in theatre. Jenny is in wardrobe with Annie at the moment and my nephew was actually dancing in Cats with me and he had a good career both in Australia and in London.

So I suppose there's music running in the blood of the family, my maternal grandfather was actually a Manly band master, there's a photo of him down in the local art gallery resplendent with mace and beard, long beard leading the Manly band.

When did you discover you had a voice?

Well, I was always sort of interested in choir music, and of coarse mainly through the Church. I remember in my first year at high school I went along to see Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury and I thought 'Oh I like this' and I went along next year to audition for a role in The Mikado which was what the school were doing.

And I went along thinking of Katisha. Thought I'd try Katisha because I had a good mezzo soprano voice and I sang for the teacher and he said to me 'John, I think you should go home and try to think a bit lower' and I thought 'I wonder what he means lower'and discovered of coarse that I was a baritone. And I finished up doing Pish Tush in Mikado'making my debut at Manly Boys' High School as a baritone. In the cast was also Nick Tate, the actor who was Ko-ko on that occasion and a couple of years later in the school of course Richard Divall came in as a student. I was in my senior years; Richard was only a junior but he can remember me singing in school concerts.

Family support?

My family I think were always quite supportive. Naturally my father wanted me to go into his import-export business. All parents, I think want their children to have an easier path in life able to have either money or skill, and dad had built up a good business and he wanted me to go into it. He was a bit reluctant to openly support my singing career so when I left school I went to work in the business but I also took part in local drama societies' things and it was because I had to sing a song in French at one of the plays that I decided to go to a local singing teacher and have a few singing lessons to try and get my tongue around it and I fell on my feet. Eric was a good teacher. He used to be in the old Gladys Moncrieff musicals and in fact on two occasions I met Glad' who came out here to see him when she was in Sydney. I was only with Eric for 18 months when he passed on but he'd given me a letter of introduction to a great friend of his Frederick Jagel, who was teaching at the New England Conservatorium in Boston.

Freddie had been for 26 seasons a principal tenor at the Metropolitan Opera and anyway I went over to the United States on business for my Father and I got in touch with Freddie in Boston....he was absolutely wonderful. He gave me some lessons and for the first time I actually realised that I had the potential for Opera. He released the vocal mechanism I think and then of coarse to top everything up he gave me a letter of introduction to the Metropolitan Opera Council in New York and I went down there and they gave me tickets to the rehearsals and performances of Opera so there I was watching Renata Telbaldi rehearsing and performing....I even had afternoon tea with Giovanni Martinelli and it was absolutely unbelievable. I thought if ever there were voices up there persuading me by virtue of making these things available to me to actually peruse a more intense vocation then that's precisely what I did.

I mean among people that I heard overseas, I went to Paris for the opening of the 1965 season to hear Maria Callas in tosa which in itself was worth the whole trip because it was a voice that had such rich dimensions on the stage combined with her overall charisma the like of which you just don't hear on the recordings. I remember it as being the most sexy voice I've ever heard in my life and I relised the power a performer can have. And of coarse later on, Gobbi was the 'Scarpia' in that production, it was the Zefferelli production, and later on my first season out of the Sydney Conservatorium with Opera Australia in Adelaide doing 'Tosca' with 'Gobbi' and 'Marie Collier' I was able to see first hand what it was that made this man such a great singing actor.

Anyway I came back to Australia after that trip fired up and ready to go, went into the Sydney Conservatorium and I did have some lessons with Harold Williams and thought this isn't quite where I wanted to go. Harold was a very fine teacher but more geared to the English Art Song rather then the Opera world so I found a teacher outside the Conservatorium, Max Speed who I've actually been studying with now for 35 years, and I still have lessons from Max who's in his mid eighties, still got the sharpest pair of ears under the Sun, and I don't get away with anything!

Max actually helped me to have secure high notes which is what I think a singer needs primarily because usually always the high notes the climax of the aria, most important part dramatically so I really had to find a teacher who could teach me to sing my high notes, and Max certainly did that. I then coached with Megan Evans, in fact Megan played for me in my very first Eisteddfod when I sang Caro Mio Ben. In fact last Saturday we had Megan's 81st birthday and she was something like official accompanist for the city of Sydney Eisteddfod for forty odd years and everybody, June Bronhill, Joan Sutherland all those people Megan remembers them as starting out so I did fall on my feet not only with teachers but with overall guidance. I got a scholarship to study in the first year at the Sydney Conservatorium Opera School and did wonderful work with wonderful people then a scholarship to London Opera Centre and then a contract with Covent Garden so I think things fell into place fairly rapidly.