It was all Stephen Beet’s baby; but what had become simply musical theory in 2005 is now practice again, he tells me. Eric will sing solo soprano items from Handel’s Messiah, first performed by the choir of St Patrick’s in April 1742. Eric is entering his second year of a Bachelor of Physical Science course, and studies lyric singing at the Paris Conservatoire. The Lady chapel of St Patrick’s should hold no terrors for a soloist who, three years later, sang outdoors with a choir of 10,000 children to 40,000 spectators and millions more TV viewers. “The voices of the old boy sopranos live through me, and I aim to keep and develop my soprano voice,” Eric says.
