28-04-2025
Christopher Maltman: I had to lose my six-pack to be a better opera singer
Christopher Maltman describes himself as a 'complete and utter fantasy geek', a confession that comes out of the blue given that — at the risk of peddling clichés about nerds who like elves and orcs — for decades the Cleethorpes-born baritone was the alpha male of British opera stars, the buffest of Don Giovannis and Billy Budds, and always on any list of the so-called Barihunks of opera, men who were as famous for chiselled abs as they were for vocal finesse in medium-low ranges.
As we sit in a café on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, the city where Maltman has lived since 2020, he tells me he started playing Dungeons & Dragons 'when I was in school, in 1984. We still have the same
