Alex Aldren, the opera-singing doctor shares his story
A few weeks ago, you may have seen a video circulating on social media of a doctor treating colleagues to a rendition of Puccini’s famous ‘Nessun dorma’.
The doctor was none other than Dr Alex Aldren, a locum senior house officer working between the Royal London, Newham Hospital, and Whipps Cross.
The video subsequently went viral and has been watched by millions around the world; you may have also seen that Dr Aldren trained in medicine, but left the profession to become a tenor.
With this being said, we caught up with Alex to discuss his background and how he is finding being back in the NHS at such an unprecedented time.
“Hi I’m Alex, a locum SHO at Barts Health.
I grew up in the market town of High Wycome in Buckinghamshire, and during this time, I developed an interest in both medicine and music. My dad was a doctor and I remember him coming home and saying how much he enjoyed his job. In school, I always really liked the sciences and I wanted to help people, so it seemed studying medicine would be a good fit for me.
When I was 18, I followed this dream and went to the University of Birmingham and studied Medicine; something which I really enjoyed.
Halfway through the six-year degree, however, I fell in love with singing and started developing a passion for opera. Growing up, my mum was a violinist and we always had a lot of music playing in the house; music really is a big part of my life.
As I was studying medicine at Birmingham University, on one of my day’s off I auditioned for a singing scholarship which I managed to get into. What shocked me was after my first lesson, the teacher said I should give up medicine to focus on singing full time. From there I was torn.
As the years went on, I finished my degree in medicine and got a role at The Royal London Hospital as a junior doctor, I was also doing a lot of local singing in the evenings and at the weekends. As the role of a junior doctor picked up and became busier, however, I never really had any time for the singing, something I really missed.
In 2016, I decided to bite the bullet and follow my passion for singing. I applied for the Royal Academy of Music’s Opera School and had an amazing Italian soprano as a mentor. I graduated from there in March 2019 and started singing professionally. I worked at the Royal Opera House and also sang at a number of Opera festivals such as Garsington. Next month, I was even meant to have my American debut, but then Covid-19 came.
All of my music gigs dried up and the whole opera industry has been put on hold. Seeing how much pressure the NHS were under I decided to get back in contact with my old manager to see if they needed any support. Soon after, I was back on shift helping out.
The video you see online was at the Royal London, there’s also another video of me signing at Newham. The reason the video came about was because a few people knew me from my stint as a doctor a few years ago. When I was working full-time, I would normally sing on special occasions such as Christmas.
Also, as a hospital staff member, when you’re on the ward and see new faces you normally engage in conversation to get to know people. On my Covid shift, a few staff members at the Royal London asked me what I did, to which I said I was an opera singer. They said, ‘prove it’.
Although it’s an extremely stressful time in the NHS right now, the support and comradery between colleagues has been amazing. I’m really enjoying being back to support Barts Health during the pandemic and I’m glad I could give my colleagues a welcome distraction during our shift.
Who knows what my future career may bring, I was just starting my opera career so it’s been fantastic to raise some awareness outside of the opera community.
With the video going viral, I’m also looking at ways to raise some money with any profits going to the Barts Charity Emergency COVID-19 appeal".