Hugh Vickers talks to Mark Stone about his appearances at the Apollo with Glyndebourne Touring Opera this week (to December 7)

Mark StoneTalking to Mark Stone, the young baritone who sings Eugene Onegin in the Glyndebourne Touring production of Tchaikowsky's opera at the Oxford Apollo, proved most enjoyable. On hearing that his degree was obtained at King's College, Cambridge, I at first assumed that, as with so many Oxford-based singers, he might have started singing with a scholarship to its world-famous choir.

"Not at all. To tell you the truth, I did once audition for the choir, but they turned me down! I read maths, and then became a chartered accountant in the City before joining Flemings' merchant bank. All the while, however, I was acutely aware of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama 200 yards from where I worked. Challenging sounds come out of it when you pass . . . Eventually I walked in, auditioned, and found myself on their (outstanding) opera course."

Like several gifted young singers I've met, Mark found the transition between study and professional life eased by winning the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Prize, today offered in conjunction with Decca.

"I made my debut with Opera North in 1998 as Escamillo, the toreador in Carmen, and soon added Marcello in La Bohme and Don Giovanni. Claudio in Berlioz's Batrice et Bndict for Welsh National Opera was also great, apart from having to appear with Donald Maxwell, who invariably steals any show he's in."

I mention how visually stunning that production appeared when it came to Oxford four years ago -- set in the Sicily of Garibaldi 150 years ago, clearly owing much to Visconti's wonderful film The Leopard.

"Yes, it's one of the few productions I know in which the visual show is arguably better than the music. But as so often, there were distractions (apart from Donald Maxwell) -- that offstage barking dog, for instance."

I wondered if one could say the same about the antics of Richard Suart as the drunken gardener Antonio in Garsington's excellent Figaro two years ago. Here Mark played the main part, opposite the lovely Icelandic singer Hulda Gardarsdottir as Susanna.

"Yes, Stuart was rather over the top, wasn't he. At one point, during the Count's aria, half the audience was totally distracted, watching him keeling over into the rose-bushes clutching his bottle of Chianti. But it was a splendid production, and everyone singing at Garsington enjoys the atmosphere."

I tell him: 'I feel the Mozart parts mean a lot to you -- apart from Figaro, you've also sung Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte at Grange Park, and Don Giovanni in Montpellier as well as for Opera North. The Don is notoriously difficult to present convincingly -- I have seen interpretations varying from Tito Gobbi's smiling bon viveur to Tom Erik Lie at Garsington last year, presenting a cold, ruthless schemer like Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Which do you favour?'

Mark's answer was strikingly similar to that which the director Graham Vick gave me when I asked him the same question last week: "I think he's simply a man who's pressed the 'self-destruct' button. There is a moral note in the opera, just as in the original story. It shows that we all have the capacity to go completely off the rails. Giovanni is the essence of unsatisfied man -- he will do anything to fill the hole inside him -- women, drink, food, whatever'.

I ask: 'Doesn't that bring us neatly to the part of Eugene Onegin, which you're about to play in Oxford? Isn't he also something of the heartless playboy, at least in Pushkin's original story? Perhaps Tchaikovsky's music softens him a bit, as music so often does."

"Not so. Unlike Giovanni, Onegin is on a journey, towards self-knowledge and redemption. In the first half, where he scorns the innocent love of Tatyana, and ends up killing his friend Lensky in a pointless duel, he is indeed, as the other characters perceive, cold and heartless. But the Onegin who re-appears at Prince Gremin's ball in the last act -- who in bitter remorse now responds to her love, too late -- is a totally changed man. Tatanya has woken him up, spiritually. I hadn't realised the significance of his journey before I started working on the piece."

'Talking of journeys, you're also performing Schubert's Winterreise in Oxford, at the Jacqueline du Pr Music Building on Friday, December 6.'

"Yes -- this time, of course, a journey into irretrievable madness. Fortunately my pianist is that very experienced conductor Martin Andre -- one of the few who can claim to have conducted all six of Britain's major opera companies. We did Figaro together in New Zealand'.

'Graham Vick was saying to me last week that opera audiences are declining.'

"I must say I don't see it. Eugene Onegin's a sell-out everywhere we go. As we were saying, I think all great art takes the audience on a journey -- like Onegin, or the poor lost poet of the Winterreise. Who wants opera 'dumbed-down', like Russell Watson? With surtitles to help, a great opera like Onegin involves only a little extra effort -- and it's not always realised that people enjoy doing just that."