Something wicked this way comes

She said: "Macbeth is very rarely performed in this country - you don't hear it very often. The reason we put English Opera Singers (EOS) together is that there are not so many opportunities to hear the grand opera at all.

"What the English listen to mostly is Handel, Gilbert and Sullivan and Mozart. If you have a bigger voice you pretty much have to go to Europe to perform unless you're singing at Covent Garden.

"What we're trying to do is to provide a platform for singers who have bigger voices more suited to grand opera who can't really find enough work in this country."

Macbeth will be performed at St James' Church in Piccadilly without costume, or the singers acting out the roles, in a bid to give the audience as pure an impression of Verdi's work as possible.

Danesfield said: "It's a fantastic opera with the most wonderful music. It brings together to work of two geniuses - Shakespeare and Verdi.

"What makes it a great work is the way the composer expresses drama through the music - there is not a single moment when you think 'Oh, this is a bit boring'. It really draws you in.

"The more I sing Lady Macbeth the more I understand her.

"She encourages her husband to murder people, but what drives her is the ambition - she sees an opportunity and she understands that it will not be taken because her husband is a very weak man - she calls him a coward at every opportunity.

"She knows that if she does nothing and doesn't prod him and manipulate him, the job will not be done.

"It's an evil job, but the problem is the more you practise, the more you identify with the character until you understand what she does totally needs to be done.

"There is the crown - she can have it, or her husband can, and it's a murder that is strangely justified.

"But towards the end Lady Macbeth gets a sleepwalking scene - a great madness scene - and you really see how badly things can end if you're too ambitious."

Aside from a crash course in morality and the "amazing acoustic" of St James',
Danesfield said Wharfers should come to hear the voices she has selected for the performance.

She said: "The cast is going to make it worth it. We've cast the opera purely based on voice.

"I have this thing about voices being honest - not pretentious, not operatic - just pure singing from the heart.

"The main part is played by Robert Presley, right, who is the right age and has the right physique for Macbeth.

"He's not a 25-year-old playing a man of 60 as you so often see in opera houses."
Presley, originally from Alabama, is the first cousin once removed of Elvis.

He said: "I never met him, but my father knew him - they were stamped out of the same mould.

"I first fell in love with opera listening to my father's classical recordings as a child - the first thing I can really remember is hearing a recording of Aida.

"After I discovered I had some sort of voice I eventually started performing, and at the age of 19, I sang my first role - it was Puccini."

A baritone with an extensive career in the US, Presley said he'd been waiting 30 years to sing the role of Macbeth.

He said: "It's got great potential for drama and lovely soaring operatic phrases. When it was written it was really something new.

"It's a tremendous role and a real honour to sing it."

Other main roles are taken by tenor John Upperton (MacDuff) and bass baritone Stefan Unterleithner (Banco), with lesser parts covered by singers recruited from London's music colleges.

The music will be provided by pianist Kelvin Lim, director of postgraduate opera at Trinity College of Music in Greenwich.

Macbeth, St James' Church Piccadilly, Oct 24, 7pm, £20, £18 (£15), englishoperasingers.co.uk, 020 7381 0441, Tube: Piccadilly Circus