LIFE has come full circle for Harrogate tenor Zachary Neal.

While at Harrogate Grammar School, he took part in an English Touring Opera production, performing in a specially assembled choir for Helen Chadwick’s Towards An Unknown Port at Harrogate Theatre in 2012.

Now, he will be in the chorus when ETO performs Verdi’s Macbeth on Friday and Mozart’s Idomeneo on Saturday at 7.30pm at York Theatre Royal on his first professional tour since completing his music degree last summer at the Royal College of Music in London.

“Towards An Unknown Port was a cycle of songs adapted from poems by Balkan children at the time of the terrors of the concentration camps,” recalls Zachary. “We performed it as a response to the main piece, The Emperor Of Atlantis, and I remember we had envelopes for each of the children’s letters and I had to pour sand on the stage from my envelope.”

Zachary had moved from Harrogate High School to Harrogate Grammar School, a a move that was to shape his future. “It was when I changed schools that I thought about music as a career for the first time,” he says.

After four years at the Royal College of Music, Zachary returned north to Harrogate. There he worked at the Nordic coffee house Baltzersens while learning “a lot of music” for rehearsals that began in London in January for Macbeth, Idomeneo and a third touring production, Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, a lesser-known Rossini work in which he is an understudy.

York Press:

English Touring Opera in Mozart's Idomeneo, touring York Theatre Royal on Saturday. Picture: Richard Hubert Smith

“English Touring Opera was an important part of my musical upbringing, in Harrogate, and I then made my stage debut as a cover in ETO’s production of Dardanus while studying at the Royal College,” he says. “So it feels amazing to be back performing with them this year.”

Singing at a North Yorkshire theatre will carry an extra significance for Zachary this weekend. “It’s going to be the first opera that my parents have seen; they’re coming to Idomeneo on Saturday, and some friends will be at Macbeth on Friday,” he says.

In addition, on Saturday morning at 11am in the York Theatre Royal Studio he will be among five singers taking part in Waxwings, ETO's educational show with interactive, multi-sensory elements for children aged two to five and young audiences with special educational needs and disabilities.

"It's a new opera commission from the electronic artists Woo Music [Brighton brothers Mark and Clive Ives] that doesn't use a score but backing tracks, from which we improvise the piece, so it can be different every time," says Zachary. Children attending range from non-verbal to those with "high-functioning" autism.

Written and directed by Tim Yealland, Waxwings is set on the first day of term at a school run by a mythical monster who "hates the very thing you love": birds. So, what happens when a boy and a girl discover an injured waxwing and try to make it fly again? The last few tickets are still available to find out the answer. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Did you know?

Alongside performing, Zachary Neal works with an international education charity, Ark, developing young vocal ensembles in schools throughout London.