Hitting a high note

> Lucas Meachem is one of opera’s rising stars but he has not forgotten his humble roots and wants to give back to others

“All of a sudden, there was this type of singing that I could not replicate,” he said. “After hearing that, it changed my life forever.

“Sorry, Steven Tyler, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson – rest in peace – but you couldn’t pique my interest in the same way, because I could already do that.”

Meachem – who has the strapping frame of a college athlete yet with piercing blue eyes and a natural affability – voiced pride in his North Carolina roots but joked that he came from “the sticks”.

“I could go home and say: ‘I’m singing at the Met and in Vienna and London and San Francisco and Chicago, and then I say that I sang the national anthem at the Rangers game in New York, and they say: ‘The Rangers game – that’s something else’!”

With his insight into two worlds, the 39-year-old has taken to writing strikingly forthright essays aimed at aspiring singers.

Devoid of any diva-like pretension, The Baritone Blog offers everything from advice on taxes, to his thoughts on feeling out of place as an opera singer when he won a Grammy last year.

Elsewhere on the blog, in what could have been a scene from Les Miserables, he admitted stuffing his coat with food to survive when he was a student.

He also resorted to calling up food companies to compliment them on their products, leading them to send him packages of samples that would hold him over.

He said his experiences helped in La Boheme as he played Marcello, the struggling painter living among Paris bohemians.

“Somebody who can’t pay the bills – been there before. Somebody that can’t pay his utility bill, so it’s cold in the house, and he can’t afford firewood – been there, too,” Meachem said.

“There’s a lot of life imitating art in that opera for me personally.”

Meachem also offers artistic guidance to new singers on The Baritone Blog.