Toal the tenor is the business...

Opera Singer Martin Toal

Martyn meets... Martin Toal — the local with the vocals!
OLDHAM can lay claim to one of the country’s foremost tenors although you won’t find too many folk singing Martin Toal’s praises. He left Failsworth when he was only five.

But he has never forgotten his roots and Martin, who helped raise funds for Dr Kershaw’s Hospice with a concert in the town centre last Christmas, is already planning a return to the Parish Church over the 2012 festive season.

“We should be able to make an announcement around the end of March,” Martin told me over lunch in his home town.

He was clearly proud to be associated with the charity and is equally excited to be invited to perform at the One Oldham Business Awards, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, in early March.

Throughout our chat, this former languages teacher would drag the conversation to his playlist for the dinner which last year attracted 460 guests.

For singing is quite clearly his passion, his life.

But it wasn’t always thus. Singing was clearly in the genes, inherited from his maternal grandfather Edward Ellis, who at every family party — and only after his own renditions of Frank Sinatra numbers — would encourage Martin.

“Grandad was only five-foot four but he was the life and soul of every family gathering,” he recalled with a tinge of sadness.

Martin, now 45ish — his own words — and living in Hale Barns, had a tough 2011, losing his father Michael to cancer and also his grandfather at the age of 92. “Dad was only 69 and it’s no age really . . . “

Melancholy doesn’t come easily to this likeable man who seems to have found his way into the entertainment industry almost by accident.

I came away with the distinct impression that he doesn’t really know himself how he became a full-time tenor, but it’s a life he relishes, cherishes and embraces with great good humour and he is currently recording his third CD, entitled “Celtica”, a tribute to grandfather’s Gaelic roots.

Suggesting that Martin stumbled into a life in front of a microphone and audiences is probably doing him — and his sumptuous voice — a disservice, but there certainly doesn’t seem to have been much planning. It was almost an accident.

He has been a professional for less than 10 years, giving up teaching in 2003, and he insists he told his wife he was giving up work . . . but he is isn’t really that sure.

So it kind of just happened, did it? I ventured and Martin didn’t disagree. Not that he has looked back.

In addition to his concerts, he has a raft of corporate work, akin to his booking in Oldham on Friday, March 2, when he will perform for more than 450 business people, their spouses and guests, at the fourth business awards.

“We’ll open with this,” he enthused, adding: “Then we’ll do this. And if I do this around here...”

And all the while he was scribbling on a hastily drawn plan of the venue which I had doodled in my Chronicle-issue notebook.

He was energised, enthused, endearingly so as he spoke about the upcoming Oldham performance. If he became a professional tenor almost by default, he is certainly a first-class, thoroughgoing professional now.

So can Oldham really lay claim to his magical, dulcet, velvety tones? Naah....not really.

He was only five when his father, who was in the cheese business, upped sticks and moved the family to Bosley near Macclesfield to take up a better job, and later to his current place of residence in the leafy suburbs of South Manchester.

Martin had 12 months at Holy Family RC Primary but he has no recollection of singing while at the Limeside school.

His earliest recollections were of joining the choir at St Ambrose Secondary in Hale Barns and a solo of “Once in Royal David’s City”. Was he nervous? Don’t be daft...

I felt comfortable asking this question because, believe it or not, I was a choirboy at St Andrew’s Church in Southport for two years and never, ever got remotely close to a solo or anything other than carrying the cross. Apparently I looked cute in my surplice and cassock . . . but couldn’t hold a note for a nano second.

Anyway, swiftly moving on, encouraged by his inspirational music teacher Sam, Martin began to take bit parts in local amateur operatic society shows, with the West Manchester society and later with Sale and soon he was playing Lt Danny Gilmartin in “Calamity Jane”.

University came along and determined by now to become an actor, Martin took to studying languages — he is fluent in French, has conversational Italian, German and Spanish — and to further his acting career he became a ski instructor for three years in the French Alps.

Clearly we have here a man who knows his destiny.

“It was a great life, I just love skiing but there came a point when I knew i had to do something with my life, so I returned to England and took a job in technical sales with Courtaulds at Littleborough.”

You don’t have to a genius to work out that this wasn’t the life for a future tenor and within six months he had quit and enrolled on a teacher training course, languages being his route to a Post Graduate Certificate in Education.

And so he completed a full circle back to St Ambrose where he taught languages for 13 years.

All the while he was singing, at family parties with his grandfather and with the amateur operatic societies that dot those parts of Manchester.

It was football, and specifically the World Cup Italia90, was to change his life forever. “I vividly remember watching the games and listening to that sensational music chosen by the BBC to open the coverage — Pavarotti’s rendition of ‘Nessun Dorma’. It was haunting and I was hooked. I just wanted to be able to sing that piece.”

And so it came to pass that Martin Toal took up singing and coaching lessons and for 13 years, while doubling as a teacher, he learned his trade with — among others — Oldham’s very own Geoff Lawton, who once stood in for an ailing Placido Domingo at a concert in London.

Mr Lawton, head of opera studies at the Royal Northern College of Music, is one of the country’s foremost voice coaches and Martin spent four years with this guru before taking the plunge and going full time in September, 2003.

His first paid-for gig as a pro was singing at the 70th birthday party of actor Bill Roache — Ken Barlow from Corrie to you and me — and he has since sung for a host of Premier League footballers at various parties.

It’s been a roller-coaster ride. Martin has sung the National Anthem at five England football internationals, making his debut at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, when England beat Turkey.

He sang at Old Trafford when Wayne Rooney made his international debut against Liechtenstein in a European Championship qualifier. Perversely both anthems have the same stirring melody arranged by Thomas Augustine Arne in 1745 but obviously with differing lyrics.

“It was surreal,” recalls Martin, adding: “For the Liechtenstein version, which is sung in German, 76,000 fans were booing but when I sang the National Anthem the same 76,000 all joined it!”

He sang at the first competitive match at the new Wembley when England beat Israel 3-0 and, in total, has sung the National Anthem at five England games, all of which the team has won without conceding a goal.

“Yet since Fabio Capello came to manage England I haven’t been picked! He prefers pre-recorded anthems. And I have an unbeaten, unblemished record,” he laughs.

Here is a man totally at ease with himself, his career, his voice.

And ready to sing his heart out for Oldham next month. Bring it on!