Tenor Joseph Calleja has just completed a six-show run at the Royal Opera House in London. Steve Mallia caught up with him after his penultimate performance.

I was always under the impression that the tragic episode should come at the end - not the beginning - of an operatic experience. However, when I arrived at the airport 55 minutes before a London-bound flight was due to depart and discovered that the pouch which normally contains my passport had nothing but dust for company, that perception evaporated as quickly as the perspiration on my forehead.

Joseph Calleja was due on stage at the Royal Opera House (ROH) in Covent Garden within 12 hours, Malta's roads were about to become gridlocked because it was almost rush hour and, even though I set off to try, there was more chance of the national football team winning the next World Cup than me making it home and back before the plane shut its doors.

I needed a miracle. And luckily one arrived within 10 minutes. Out of desperation I called our online cameraman, whom I'd left my bag with at the airport, and asked if the passport might inadvertently have been sandwiched between a few magazines. Crisis over, I returned - red-faced though relieved - to the departures lounge as quickly as four wheels and a few potholes would allow me.

After touching down in the outer reaches of west London, I resisted the temptation to call Calleja and sent him a text message instead. There are times when the tenor cannot stop talking. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of one of his many prank telephone calls - which have taken the form of a Russian pimp, an American mafia boss and mutual friends - will testify to that.

But on performance days he must restrain the instrument that earns him a living so it can burst into the crowd like a prized thoroughbred the moment the curtain is whisked away from the stage floor.

It's a shame he cannot talk as often as the rest of us, because if he could he'd have so much to say about the 2008/9 season. Highlights include Verdi's requiem at the BBC Proms last September and his participation earlier this year in a star-studded performance to mark the 125th anniversary of the Metropolitan Opera in New York - which prompted AP writer Mike Silverman to write that he had "won the battle of the tenors".

So impressed have the Met management been with Calleja's performances there - he had a lengthy stint in Elisir D'Amore last April - that they booked him for four years. And there was more to come. When Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon pulled out of the title role in the new production of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann, which premieres in December, the part was offered to the Maltese tenor. After obtaining permission to be released from five pre-existing engagements, he accepted.

"This is probably the biggest thing so far in my career," he says. When asked why he wanted to do this over the others, Calleja says: "First, the Metropolitan needed a favour. It's a favour I can do for them and I hope it's a favour I can do really well for them. It raises my career another notch. Not just in terms of publicity, but artistically. The Tales of Hoffman is a very interesting role. The approach is very important - not just as a singer, but also as an actor."

Acting has been considered a chink in the 31-year-old's otherwise formidable armour, which prompted a reviewer to remark that he displayed the good and the bad of Pavarotti. "That was in Munich and he was saying I was too rigid in some instances." But, Calleja says, his acting has improved because he is now a better singer technically. "It's not at the same level as my singing if I'm honest, but people have been impressed at my development in that area."

However, it is his singing audiences want to witness most, and that has inevitably led to comparisons with the Italian legend's better qualities. Calleja is well aware of the curse this kind of compliment brings and has long done his level best to fend it off: "I am not the great Luciano and I will never be the great Luciano. It would be extremely presumptuous of me to think that. A voice like Pavarotti's comes maybe once in 100 years. He's one of my biggest idols and I do follow the guidelines he followed in his career, but that's in repertoire choices and what he sang. It's not about being as big as him. That's almost impossible."

Calleja is also aware that there are pitfalls along the road ahead of him and protecting his voice is the number one priority. "It almost terrorises me to think how many people I started out with have disappeared completely. Some of them decided to retire and do other things, but some of them have stopped, unfortunately, because they lost their voice."

He says, however, that in many cases the problems are caused by greed to perform - he does 50 performances a year whereas some of those who ended up badly have done as many as 95: "I don't know how anyone could do that, even with perfect technique and perfect everything. An opera singer needs his rest and needs to re-study his voice all the time because it's a living instrument. It's not a violin that you put in a box and it remains the same for 30 or 40 years. Even a violin changes, let alone a voice."

The Calleja that put his giant arms around me by the stage door of the ROH just after 6 p.m. on July 3 has changed a little too. He's some 15 kilos lighter than a few months ago after making a conscious effort to eat more healthily and undertake a regime that involves daily exercise.

After signing a few items left by fans at reception, he walks down the seemingly endless corridors of the backstage area. He picks up a bottle of water from the canteen, has brief interactions with a few cast members and staff, before heading to his Spartan dressing room to change and rev-up his voice. It is here that we part company till the end of the opera. He is clearly tense.

"On the day I try and think of anything other than the performance. I get very nervous and if I think about it too much, it makes me worse, so I try to distract myself with other things... Whether it's for five people or 5,000, the nerves are virtually the same."

On the face of things he doesn't have much to be nervous about. The lady opposite him at the ROH is Renée Fleming, the stunning American soprano who has wowed audiences for years. He is also joined by veteran baritone Thomas Hampson and the show is guided by the musical experience of Antonio Pappano. The six-performance run of Verdi's La Traviata in London has been a sell-out - even that night there wasn't a single red seat among the crowd who, incidentally, no longer observe the tradition of wearing formal attire - and has unanimously been received with rave reviews.

While the New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini heaped praise on his compatriot for her portrayal of the wayward Violetta, observing that the audience gave her a "tumultuous ovation", he could not help but notice Calleja as Alfredo, even remarking that he was slightly worried because the cheers for the Maltese tenor were "comparable" to hers.

From where I was sitting, Calleja easily edged it on volume, perhaps confirming Tommasini's assessment that "he is the real thing". The British reviewers did not hold back on the superlatives either. The Times of London said quite simply: "He is shiveringly good."

By the time I walked back to his dressing room, a sense of gratitude and elation had transcended Calleja's nerves - as he greeted a posse of well-wishers outside the door. "I'm pretty relieved and satisfied when it goes that well... I left a very good mark here and I'm happy about that as London can be a very tricky place. They know their music, they know their singers. Once they form an opinion they find it hard to change it. I'm thankful that they've always liked me."

Which is just as well, as he will be performing at the ROH until at least 2013. Next year he will be sharing a stage with Placido Domingo who, as the baritone, will be in the title role of Verdi's Simone Botonegra, while Calleja will be singing the part that the great Spanish artist used to sing as a tenor.

"It's going to be very exciting to be rehearsing with him for a few weeks," he says.

All this success could easily go to someone's head. But Calleja is, so far at least, well grounded, dismissing his mentor Paul Asciak's recent remark that he does not need anyone, musically, any more.

"Well, I need him for starters and I hope he'll stay around for many years. He was very sick last January. I'm not ashamed to admit I was devastated and scared of losing him. So I do need people and people who are like lighthouses - who can guide me - because the going is not always easy.

"I wish every night was like this, but there are nights when you're sick, there are nights when things don't go entirely as you want them. For the past few years I've had an incredible run - one success after another - but I know there will be difficult times and I do everything to avoid that; in the sense of studying, resting and living the life an opera singer has to live. But that's exactly why I need people like Paul to guide me."

The difficulties are several. Mild ailments, for example, are an occupational hazard. "It takes very little for an opera singer to be affected vocally. A common cold is nothing special for people in general but it can be disastrous for an opera singer," he says.

Calleja, who racks up more air miles in a month than most people manage in a year, also hates being separated from his two children, Clara, 5, and Xandru, who is almost three.

"Sometimes I'm watching a commercial about margarine or something and there's a moment where the father hugs the son or daughter and I get emotional. It's hard." But he tries to take at least one of them with him when he's away and they have become accustomed to that lifestyle. Some of it is even rubbing off: "I sang a concert here (on June 24) with Pappano, and Clara was there for the rehearsal. Pappano put her on a stool next to him and she loved it. I'm very pleased my children are both musical and have a good ear. Will they be opera singers? I hope not! But I will certainly give them a good musical education. I'm not forcing it on them."

With the long opera season now over, Calleja yesterday returned to his beloved homeland. Malta is forced to lend him to rest of the world for most of the year, but he will spend most of the next six weeks here catching up with friends and family.

Before he is allowed to rest, however, there is one more commitment to fulfil: an annual concert for the public he loves most, which this year will see him singing alongside pop star Michael Bolton. Is this a new direction?

"It's a new thing, but not a new direction... "Crossover is not tasteless if you respect the composer. Okay, Bolton will sing opera and he's not an opera singer. But he's not saying he is. We're going to have a fantastic repertoire from the famous musicals, arias and there will be a children's choir. The organisers and I felt that we needed something new in Malta and to introduce opera to the young generation. Unfortunately, not much is being done by the authorities to introduce culture at the moment to youngsters and this is a good way of doing it."

The concert, at the Luxol grounds in St Andrews, will not be at the most illustrious of venues - but given the size of the audience it is one of the most suitable. He laughs, a little wryly, when asked if there is anywhere in Malta he would like to perform and hasn't.

"My dream is to perform in a newly-rebuilt theatre. I'm very heartened to see that the government has decided to keep (the opera house site in Valletta) for cultural use.

It's not the best solution in the sense that a roofless theatre - whatever gizmos and things they install in it - still remains a roofless theatre and very limited in what it can do. But at least it leaves the option to do it properly one day, so I'm very happy about that.

However, if someone had to invite him to be the first to sing when the Renzo Piano-inspired project is complete, he would jump at the chance. "At one point I was going to tell the government that if they do rebuild the opera house, the first three times I would even sing for free - to raise awareness and to demonstrate that the country needs this. We're the only developed nation that doesn't have a national theatre for the performing arts and I cannot believe people just choose to ignore this."

Yet Calleja also accepts that a national theatre can be located elsewhere. "If the government decides to completely refurbish the Mediterranean Conference Centre, rendering it acoustically sound and making the backstage facilities what they should be with all the gizmos needed for this kind of theatre, then yes."

But, in the meantime, he will continue to do what he has done for many years now - sing at other theatres around the world. As we start to make our way out of the ROH, he remarks that no opera fans will be gathered outside the stage door tonight because the interview meant it took much longer than usual for him to get out. Then he stumbles upon at least 30 autograph hunters, all waiting patiently for a photo with this man who has become an international star.

As I wait for him to go to dinner, I'm still searching for a bit of tragedy after my passport incident failed to produce the goods. Yes, it's true that Violetta died at the end of Traviata, but she got up again to be cheered by the crowd. And Calleja is in front of me being adored.

I did, however, put one final question to the Maltese tenor before we left the building: Is Alfredo, who wins a series of card games in one of the most engaging scenes, a better gambler than Calleja, who is also partial to a game or two? "Actually, in this case he definitely is," he says, with the same expression that a rabbit has just before a car strikes him.

Now, that is tragic.

See excerpts from the interview as well as performance and backstage footage from the Royal Opera House on timesofmalta.com.

Tickets for the Joseph Calleja-Michael Bolton concert can be purchased online from www.nng promotions.com or from Agenda Bookshops, Exotique and Vodafone outlets. Prices start from €35.

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