The 'Nation's Tenor' Alfie Boe is contemplating a stage dive when he returns to Birmingham next year, as Alison Jones discovers.

There is no sneaking out of an Alfie Boe concert, as one fan discovered when she tried to steal a march on the packed crown leaving his concert in Symphony Hall last year.

Alfie spotted her progress and leapt down off the stage to pursue her, anxious she shouldn’t miss his big moment – singing Bring Him Home from Les Misérables.

“I thought, ‘This is a great opportunity to make a scene of this’.

“So I walked all the way to the back of the hall right behind her. I was speaking into the microphone in my hand and it was coming over the PA system so she didn’t know until I tapped her on the shoulder.”

However, he wasn’t about to humiliate her in the way of a stand-up comedian who has spotted an audience member nipping to the loo, or coming back tardy from the interval bar.

“It was getting quite late, about 10 o’clock and I had still got my encores to go. It had gone on longer than I expected.

“She was with her husband and they were both quite elderly, so I wasn’t offended at all. They probably had a bus to catch

“I would have given them a lift home if they had waited.

“I gave her a kiss goodnight and said, ‘I’ll see you next time’.”

She might want to stand well back if she does go, because when Alfie returns to Birmingham for his concert next March it will be at the NIA, and he is planning to unleash his inner rock star.

“I do like to connect with the audience and there may be a moment – if the people at the front are young enough and look like they can hold my weight – I might do a stage dive. You never know.

“I will probably be the first tenor to have tried that. I don’t think Pavarotti ever did,” he adds with a laugh.

Fans of Big Luci would have been so stunned if he tried that they would probably have forgotten to catch him.

But Alfie has already crossed that bridge between classical artist and popular performer that Luciano and his fellow tenors, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, only really did as The Three Tenors.

“There are a number of tenors, classical singers, who are just happy singing classical music. That is all they want to do. Which is fine. There is nothing wrong with that. Everybody has to find their own little niche,” says Alfie.

“But it wasn’t working for me and I had to do something different because my passion was stronger. I had a goal in life to join genres, to break down the barriers.

“All I want to do is sing good songs, and there are many good songs out there, whether they be classical, rock, pop, jazz, folk, country...”

This revolutionary spirit seems entirely fitting for a singer famous for his performances atop the barricades of 19th century France in Les Mis.

By the time he first performed as Jean Valjean, the parole-dodger hunted across the years by the dogged Inspector Javert, Alfie, 38, had been singing professionally for more than a decade.

However, Bring Him Home has now become something of a signature for him.

“I think it was when I did it at the 02 Arena (to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the show. The concert encore performance was dubbed “The Valjean Quartet” — with Alfie singing alongside Colm Wilkinson, John Owen-Jones and Simon Bowman, who have all played Valjean), that was the moment that told me I really had an opportunity to create a different world for myself.”

Now he is not just packing concert halls, he is big enough for arenas.

“The success of the last tour just blew me away. I thought we could carry on like that. Then, when they said I’d be playing arenas, I thought, ‘Wow, this is wonderful!’.”

He has already planned how he is going to fill the extra space.

“Mostly with the family,” laughs Alfie, who is the youngest of nine children. “No. I’ll have dancers, backing singers, a band.”

It is a dream come true for the Lancashire lad who thought that fame was something that happened to other people.

Though he had grown up listening to his father’s opera records and singing showtunes at Fleetwood’s Marine Hall as a schoolboy, he did not see how he could translate that into a career – in spite of being blessed with the wonderfully operatic sounding name of Alfred Giovanni Roncalli Boe.

“My middle name is after Pope John XXIII.

“I would love to say that I was a full blooded Italian and great at cooking pasta but, no, it’s my mother being Catholic.”

He used to perform in clubs round Blackpool and took part in amateur operatics. However, thinking a professional career was “not on the cards”, he took a job paint-spraying and polishing cars at a TVR factory where he would occasionally serenade his work mates.

It was there, so the Cinderella story goes, that he was overheard one day by a man who had connections in the music business and suggested he go to London and audition for D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.

He did and ended up training at D’Oyly Carte, with the Royal College Of Music, The National Opera Studio and at the Royal Opera House.

“I basically sang to the right people in the right place at the right time and just went for it really,” says Alfie.

Ten years ago he accepted an invitation to play the lead in Baz Luhrmann’s production of La bohème, which was being controversially staged on Broadway, a traditional home for musicals rather than operas.

It worked out personally as well as professionally (he won a Tony) for Alfie, as that is where he met his actress wife Sarah. The couple now live in London with their three-year-old daughter, Grace, and three-month-old-son, also called Alfie.

Alfie has always been happy to mix musical worlds. He used to appear as the “opera dude” on albums by The Clint Boon Experience.

He has also proved a hit on YouTube, singing Nessun Dorma on a clip labelled “Alfie Boe warbles a bit” in the kitchen of his friend and former landlord Matt Lucas, of Little Britain fame.

The pair also duetted on He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.

The biography on his website mentions his achievement of winning the West London Karaoke Championship, performing a “scorching rendition” of Elvis’s Suspicious Minds, with a pride equal to that in his classical awards and albums that have gone Gold.

Despite being so closely liked with the role of Jean Valjean, Alfie missed out on being cast in the film of Les Mis due out later this year, though he was invited to audition by the director, Tom (The King’s Speech) Hooper.

“I went up for it alongside Hugh Jackman,” he reveals.

“I went first but I think they had definitely decided on Hugh before I even walked in the room because he’s obviously a big name Hollywood actor.

“I am not familiar with Russell Crowe’s voice (who is playing Javert) but I am sure they will have the right people around them to help them though it.

“Hugh’s done musical theatre before. He’ll be fine. It’s not bad to lose out to him.”

Alfie hasn’t ruled out trying his hand at a non-singing role sometime in the future.

“Acting is something I am hugely passionate about. I would love to be in a movie or a play in the West End.

“I don’t want to put any limits on what I can do.”

For now he must content himself with being The Nation’s Tenor, though he blushes at the nickname.

“ I don’t give myself titles. I don’t call myself an opera singer, classical tenor or tenor. Just singer.

“But if they want to adopt me as that it is an amazing compliment.

“As an artist, I am at the disposal of the nation. It is like being a living iPod.

“I am here to sing for the people. As long as I am still doing that and still turning out good music for them, they can call me what they want.”

* Alfie Boe will be at the NIA on Friday, March 22, 2013. For tickets, call 0844 338 8000 or go to www.thenia.co.uk He will also be joining Viva Musica as their special guest at Dudley Concert Hall on May 19 (tickets sold out).