Covent Garden's Eric Cutler - 'I'm the luckiest tenor alive'

Critically acclaimed American singer Eric Cutler should never have been an opera singer. He even brands himself, “the luckiest tenor alive!” Set to perform the lead in Fidelio this week at Covent Garden, Eric, 48, would have been a “conservationist” in sleepy rural Iowa, had he not met Pablo Testolini, a Mexican exchange student, when he was still at high school. “I was about 15 and in the 10 th grade, when Pablo and I became friends.

“We were playing billiards one night and in the basement, and he put on opera. I'll never forget it. It was Luciano Pavarotti singing Tosca, the third act aria.

“I remember I looked at him and I said, ‘what is that?’ And he's like, ‘it's opera’. I'm like, ‘what?’ And from that moment on, I would tell him to put on another one. And so on.

” Pablo’s interest stemmed from his father, a tenor, but Eric kept his passion for opera a secret from his own family, and friends. Said Eric: “I would go to the public library in Des Moines, drive to the city and check out recordings, and would listen, and then to progress, I would get the score to the music. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was learning these arias.

” Added Eric: “You must understand, I grew up in a farming state. Iowa is like 92 per cent farmland. “My grandparents were farmers, and I grew up in a very small town of about 3000 people.

“You know, there's no opera house in Iowa!” Finally, he came out as a budding opera singer to his mother afte.