He sang for Henry Washington at Brompton Oratory, and took singing lessons privately from Roy Hickman, a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, whose students included the tenor Ian Partridge, the contralto Ruth Little, and the countertenor Kevin Smith.
From 1965 to 1969, he played an important role in the management of the pioneering early music group Musica Reservata, founded by Michael Morrow and John S. Beckett.
Also in 1970 he made his professional opera debut at the Landestheater Darmstadt as Ottone in L'incoronazione di Poppea in a production by Harro Dicks, conducted by Hans Drewanz using a new edition by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Between 1973 and 1996, he worked on the staff of The Guardian, where he was first commissioned as a critic in 1972 – covering Rudolf Bing's farewell Gala at the Met, and the new Bayreuth Festival Tannhäuser staged by Götz Friedrich.
Two months after leaving the Guardian he was invited to become opera critic of the Evening Standard, replacing Alexander Waugh in a post that he held until 2002 when Norman Lebrecht joined the paper as arts supremo on the retirement of editor Max Hastings.
He worked as a dramaturg in collaboration with opera director Keith Warner at the Monnaie in Brussels in 1998 and at the Theater an der Wien in 2003 and 2006.