Preview: Teseo, Hackney Empire, London

This New Yorker had a higher calling

Counter-tenors may now be ten a penny, but 10 years ago they were relative rarities: many people's first experience of this voice came with Gerard Corbiau's award-winning film Farinelli. The voice on the soundtrack was actually two spliced together – a soprano for the upper register, and a male one provided by the black New Yorker Derek Lee Ragin. That was in 1994, by which time Ragin had already enjoyed a stellar career as a Baroque soloist in Europe and America: it's a surprise to discover that when he sings in Handel's Teseo with English Touring Opera on Friday, this will be his UK stage debut.

He didn't come from a privileged background, but he did grow up listening to his parents singing spirituals, which is why his "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit" remains his own favourite disc: "Those songs," he says, "are part of me." And though he started out as a pianist, he switched at 22 to singing, first as a tenor-baritone. "But I didn't have much of a range, which was why I joined an early music group, which didn't require high stuff. Meanwhile I was also singing falsetto with a pop group – so the transition from one voice to another wasn't that major."

A German-American admirer decided to finance his counter-tenor studies, and introduced him to John Eliot Gardiner, after which his career took off like a rocket. "It happened very fast," he says. "In 18 months I'd gone from being a pianist to being a professional singer. My range is a third lower than it was at first – it now goes up to E and down to the E two octaves below. Teseo lies comfortably within this range."

As we speak he's being fitted up for the cape he will wear and his wig: his ebullient enthusiasm is infectious. Fifty next year, but you wouldn't think it.

12 October (020-8985 2424), then touring to 24 November (see www.englishtouringopera.org.uk for details)