Profile: Ian Adam

IT WASN'T easy growing up gay in Fortrose, on Black Isle, during the 1940s and 50s. Homo-sexuality was still illegal, and little boys who hated football and didn't conform were frequently humiliated. Ian Adam escaped as soon as he could, heading first for the bright lights of Glasgow, where he worked with Scottish Opera, and ultimately, on to London.

By the time of his death, in 2007, Adam, then 76, had moved on from opera singing, to become one of the world's most inspiring and admired vocal coaches, and one whose influence on British, American and Scandinavian theatre – their singers and actors alike – spanned more than thirty years.

Adam is credited with discovering the hidden potential in Michael Crawford's voice – and then training him for the arduous lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. He began coaching Crawford in 1973, when the star was cast in a musical adaptation of Billy Liar.

The actor had been a chorister as a lad, but hadn't performed in musicals before, and felt self-conscious about his singing. Adam was encouraging, saying, "Och, Michael, it's a beautiful voice. Now there may be a bit lacking on the top, and we may have to go on a wee journey down below. . . but it's there, it's there."

After Adam's tuition, Crawford became a popular star of musical theatre, appearing in Flowers for Algernon and Barnum. Then, in 1986, Crawford was overheard by Sarah Brightman, and her then husband, Andrew Lloyd Webber, when she came for her own singing lesson. The impresario is reported to have said, "I think we've found our Phantom," and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years, Adam worked with an eclectic range of people, from pop singers such as Boy George, Sting, Lulu, and Marc Almond, to the coloratura soprano Rhonda Bruce. Members of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet came to his studio for lessons, as did Princess Diana's bodyguard. One of his last jobs was coaching Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp, ahead of their roles in Tim Burton's Sweeny Todd.

He also worked with non-singing actors, to improve their stamina and delivery, and so helped Clive James, Sian Philips, Tom Conti, Anthony Andrews, and Jeremy Irons, and coached the Duchess of York ahead of her public speaking engagements.

Surprisingly, Adam told one interviewer that he never intended to teach because he enjoyed performing too much. But, he told her, "I couldn't bear people not to be good so, when I was in a company, I would end up working with some of the people I was singing with. I never thought people couldn't do something – it made me more determined to make sure they could."

Adam's musicality wasn't entirely surprising. His father, a market gardener, played the violin, and his mother also sang. As a young boy, Adam studied with Joseph Hislop, Maggie Teyte, and in Switzerland, with a vocal coach called Huessler. He worked with the London choral group, the Ambrosian Singers, headed by John McCarthy, and with Scottish Opera, singing both lead and character roles.

In 1989, Adam, who believed that anyone could learn how, hosted a television programme called, I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing. He said, "We arrive in this world singing and we leave with a very different song, a very sad song, but the journey through life can have a wonderful voice."

Around the same time, he told his friend, the Edinburgh-based advocate Ross Macfarlane, a spine-tingling, spooky tale about the time he returned to his small village . . . and encountered a ghost. Now, for the first time, that story will reach a wider audience.

Macfarlane explains, "When Ian died in 2007, he was hailed as the inspirational voice teacher of his generation. I knew Ian when I lived in London in the early 1980s, and he was already voice coach to the stars. My enduring memory of Ian involves sitting around the table in the kitchen of his beautiful house in Kensington. You'd never know who would come in next – Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson or Bonnie Langford (accompanied by her mum).

"Ian had a very dry, Scottish sense of humour and was a wonderful raconteur who would regale his guests with hilarious and indiscreet stories of the stars with whom he'd worked. A deeply intuitive person, he always seemed to find the problem with his singers and proceed to 'fix' it.

"The story that follows was told to me by Ian. It concerned his return to the small Scottish town of his birth as a young gay man in the 1960s. I always thought that it was worth the re-telling. I have changed family names etc, but the substance of the story is as he told it. Ian – are you listening?"