The industrial community of his childhood brought music alive for the our greatest Wagnerian bass, writes Christopher Morley.

It was growing up in the heart of industrial Britain which steered one of the great Wagnerians of our time to a career in music.

Amongst the factories and textile mills of Lancashire, Sir John Tomlinson’s family of miners, shopkeepers and factory workers would gather around the piano for regular singing sessions as well as taking part in local choirs.

“I was brought up in the 50s, in a very industrial community, lots of factories, lots of textile-mills. All my family were miners and shopkeepers and textile-workers mainly, and factory-workers,” Sir John explains.

“And the great thing that happens in industrial areas is that they set up male voice choirs, brass bands, church choirs, and so on. I was brought up in a house where I was the youngest of five children, with a piano in the back room. All my brothers and sisters were singers, they all played the piano, my mother was a fine soprano, my uncle conducted the male voice choir, my aunt taught me piano, another aunt gave me some early singing lessons when I was 16 or so.

“I was surrounded by music-making, so music was a fact of life for me, and I was singing the whole time, as a boy soprano and then the voice broke and I had this very deep voice, and everyone was saying ‘what’s that noise?’.”

But despite this passion for music, Sir John’s career actually began with taking a degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester.

“Singing was a part of my life, but of course you got a ‘proper job’ in those days,” he explains. “When I was 21 I’d got my degree at Manchester, and I’d been thinking for a number of months, perhaps I should give the singing a go, because I did seem to have this rather exceptional voice.

“And so I went to the college of music in Manchester, studied there for four years, and I learned how to sing. There is a technique involved in singing, and it takes a long time to become a good singer.

“It was quite a hard decision to take at the time, quite risky, but it slowly paid off. The graph of my career started pretty slowly back in the 70s, but it’s just gone on and on and on, and I’ve done things that I never even dreamed I would ever do.”

Sir John now lives in Lewes, Sussex, a place he moved to after leaving college in order to sing in the Glyndebourne chorus for three or four years. “They were very good to me, giving me the opportunity of understudying small parts, and sort of got me started, really,” he says.

His career includes 18 years at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth, a world-sung portfolio which takes in Wotan in the Ring cycle and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, and so much else in all other kinds of repertoire.

In the contemporary field Sir John has been decapitated as the Green Knight in Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain, and he tells me a charming story about his links with that most renowned of contemporary English composers.

“Harrison Birtwistle and I were born in the same building! I come from Oswaldwistle in Lancashire, and he came from a place very near Accrington. We were both born in the nursing-home in Accrington – though he’s a bit older than I am... We’re both Lancashire men, and it’s been a wonderful time singing his music.”