The evening will also contain a modern composition by Peter Copley (which Tomlinson will participate in) and Chan Pui Fan’s Ching Ming Memorial, but it is the excerpts from Boris Gudunov which will draw the crowds. “It is a wonderful opera which nearly got forgotten until an adaptation by Rimski-Korsakov in the early 20th century,” says Tomlinson. “Mussorgsky had an eccentric and individual style which didn’t go down well with many of the conservative critics of his age. Nowadays it is recognised as a great masterpiece.”

I ask him whether it will be difficult to access the necessary emotion while singing only excerpts. “When you are doing an opera, the scene is set up for you and it is easy for you to get into character,” he says. “When you are just doing excerpts you start from cold, so you really have to work hard to conjure up the necessary feelings. You have to work much harder.”

Later on, he comes round the office to drop in some pictures, and I put a face to that amazing voice which has taken him so far. Wearing a hunting hat and a duffle coat, he oozes charm. I apologise again for forgetting to phone him, and again he waves my apologies aside. Which is just as well. However much he’s acting out the roles, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of the local Wagnerian baddie. AL