Alfred Harris: I started singing in Church of England choirs as a boy soprano at age seven. The war had just started. We moved from Kew Gardens to Richmond and got bombed out there. We slept under our grandmother's massive dining room table in Kew for a couple of weeks after the bombing, then to friends in Princes Risboro some 30 miles or so north of London for several more weeks.

My father's job at the Office of Works (now the Ministry) moved to Southport in Lancashire. 

After a year we all moved to Bath in the West of England. It was here that I regularly sang in the  local parish Church of England as well as my mother's Methodist church.

The part was Toad in "Toad of Toad Hall", music for my two songs was composed by a sixth former called Raymond Leppard who went on to a distinguished career at Glyndebourne. At the end of the war we all returned to Kew Gardens. Our school did a production of Purcell's "Dido & Eneas". I sang the sailor's song "Come away fellow sailors",my last part as a boy soprano. There was no dramatic change in the voice, I just gradually became a very light tenor continuing to sing at both the Methodist church & C of E churches. In those days there were lots of paid opportunities at all churches for special music at Christmas, Easter and Choir Festival. It was normal to sing a truncated version of "Messiah" every other year, every third year we sang "Elijah" and also every third year Haydn's "Creation". Another hoary staple was Stainer's "Crucifixion" which was a standard Church of England offering at passion season. Also tons of other sub-standard Victorian stuff which I would have to go on sodium pentothal to remember. We also sang Bach's Christmas Oratorio (parts 1, 2 & 6) & bits of St John's Passion. Tried to sing "Haste ye Sheppard's" again a few weeks ago. Can't do those fast runs anymore. My first teacher was Wesley Dennison, choir director of the Methodist church, a terrific bass baritone and a member of the BBC Singers. A small professional group paid for out of radio license fees! Yes, those were the days. I actually made money singing around in those days.

My main opera experiences started with the Philopera. A group run by an holocaust survivor atomic scientist named Franz Manton. Opera was his amateur passion. He was a pretty good conductor. His wife was a very good soprano who had been a member of the Covent Garden chorus. We did very unusual things, mostly exhumed from the vaults at Covent Garden. There was "Lucretia Borgia", "Fra Diavolo", "L'Amico Fritz",  "Russlan & Ludmilla"(in English), Rossini's "Otello". All these were double cast. I sang the gondolier & Rodrigo in the "Otello". For another company (mostly financed by the East Germans) I  learned "Rienzi" in English.( Once again, double cast). After various other tenors came and went over six months, the company went broke three weeks  before the performances. I never even got paid my fifty "quid"! That is when I really decided that Chartered Accountancy was a much more secure means of earning a living.

I continued music as an avocation during British army national service. I even got time off to attend summer music camp both years I was in the army. The first time the army even paid the fee. I will always remember the learning experiences with Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten. After the army I took a job with what is now KPMG in Milan. I travelled all over Europe. A lesson here, a master class there, with various great singers. I particularly remember Paolo Silveri "determination made me a baritone". Fischer Dieskau "lieder was meant to be sung by people, not just by pros". Sena Jurinac  getting annoyed with a young American soprano "Think about your bones, you can't do  anything to them".

My landlady was a Serena Scotti, a former soprano with Radio Italiana Svizzera and also Trieste Opera. She was about 4'9" high, around 50 and childless. Her husband was the city architect for Milan who had minored in organ in Rome. Neither spoke English. They had this huge extra bedroom in their wonderful penthouse apartment where his mother had lived for a while. This was my room because the old lady, about 80, could not stand Serena, her daughter in law. The old lady, a decorated former partisan, spoke pretty good English. Serena had mystical memories of her operatic past. There was a photo of her as Lucia on her bedside table. At sunset, every night,  she lit two candles underneath the photo. She had an excellent grand piano and a cedar chest containing operatic accouterments. In the evening we used to sing accompanied by her husband. Wearing one of her many wigs,her favorite duet was the "cherry picker's duet" from "L'Amico Fritz".

Later I opened an office for KPMG in Rome. I remember the  bass relief of Italy with all its African possessions on the wall of the foyer of the Rome Opera." Viva Il Duce". After living virtually out of a suitcase in Italy, I returned briefly to "Old Blighty" before going to Seattle. In Seattle I was due to sing in the chorus of "Aida" with Sandor Konya but business assignments nixed it.

Moved down to the Bay area then to Pebble Beach in 1978. With singing as an avocation I have sung all sorts of things that I would never have had a chance to sing as some chorus pro omeplace. I was in the second year of the Virginia Best Adams class at the Carmel Bach Festival. I think it was 1986. I've sung all the big Schubert song cycles, Dichterliebe, Petrarc sonnets, Dies Natalis, On Wenlock Edge, Zapisnick Zmizeleho. I'm always curious about music new to me. I read scores in the evening like most people read books. Its all fun and great to try to help younger people with experience opportunities.