Glamorous good looks and the talent to be Britain's best-selling classical music singer haven't diminished Katherine Jenkins' girl-next-door demeanour, but there are signs the Welsh mezzo-soprano is finally letting loose her inner diva.
Few others have Jenkins' credentials for the role. While in Hong Kong performing with Placido Domingo at the AsiaWorld Arena last Saturday, her latest album, Rejoice, was at the top of the local classical charts. 'Who is No 2?' she says.
Sarah Brightman perhaps wasn't the answer she wanted to hear, but it was a fair enough question; Jenkins' previous release, From the Heart, was at No 6 (it's been in the top 10 for more than a year) and she is the only singer in Britain to simultaneously hold the No 1 and 2 positions on the classical album charts.
Jenkins' star went supernova in Britain in 2003, when Universal music invited her to audition after hearing a demo she'd recorded during her final year at the Royal Academy of Music. She sang for a group of managers 'who looked terribly bored,' Jenkins says, and she left the company thinking her audition had amounted to nothing. An hour later she received an offer for the largest contract in British classical recording history, a six-record deal reportedly worth #1 million (HK$15.4 million).
She had been working for #10 an hour teaching children in London when her first album, Premiere, debuted at No 1, and Britain quickly grew accustomed to her down-to-earth charms.
'I cried,' she says. 'It was a Sunday and I was at my home in London when I got the call. I was sitting in the kitchen and I cried. I called all my friends one by one and got more upset. I think I may have even opened a bottle of champagne.'
