Afternoon:
10°c
Touring classical star who sings free for his supper
Nick Curtis10 Oct 2008
It is the ultimate in dinner party entertainment. Opera singer Will Martin, whose debut album hit number one in the classical charts, will come to your house and literally sing for his supper.
The 24-year-old tenor from Wellington, New Zealand, moved to the UK and signed a five-album record deal with Universal for £1.12million just a year ago.
"I spend so much time alone in hotel rooms while doing promotion around the country, so this seemed an ideal way to meet my audience in a very social, informal way," he said.
The day he offered to sing free for his supper on www.gumtree.com he received 500 requests for his services. "The first time I did it was for an executive driver and his wife in Southampton," he said.
"They had two friends and the wife's parents over for the evening, and served me a very nice roast dinner. I sang some songs from the album, but over the meal I'd got an idea of their tastes, so I did some Sinatra and Elton John too."
Martin, who is slim, blue-eyed and boyishly handsome, says he is not concerned about meeting fans who want more than his vocal talents but contrary to early reports, he is not looking for a bed for the night as well as a meal.
"My management and record company assure me they are vetting the applicants," he said. "Then again, I am single at the moment. Of course, there's the danger that if my voice is off, I'll only get toast, or one potato."
The Standard asked Martin to sing for his lunch for actors Robin Sebastian, 42, and Lucy Sullivan, 38, and their housemate, writer and editor Karin Mochan, 39, at their flat in South Kensington.
After bell-clear renditions of the Nat King Cole hit Nature Boy and the Maori lullaby Hine E Hine (he is one-16th Maori on his mother's side), all agreed he had earned his cold roast chicken.
Since New Zealand offers little employment for a classical singer, Martin took every musical job he could get in his teens, singing in bars, at corporate functions, and with a covers band in Dubai for three months. He has also sung the national anthem three times for the New Zealand rugby team, for whom he is a kind of mascot. "They've never lost when I've sung for them," he explained.
Yet his sights were always set on the UK. "If people say they like my voice here, I know they know what they're talking about."
On its week of release, Martin's album, A New World, sold 10,000 copies. You can access his gumtree advert via his website.
