A KENT businessman has swapped boardrooms and conferences for dressing rooms and curtain calls as he embarks on a very different venture.

Management consultant Matthew Quirk, from Seal near Sevenoaks, has quit his job in order to pursue his dream of becoming a full time singer - and has invested thousands of pounds into starting his own opera company to help him on the way.

The 54-year-old will be treading the boards with the Unexpected Opera Company, under the watchful eye of former English National Opera director Lynn Binstock, in the company’s first production.

Matthew said: “My friends and former colleagues all think I am mad but this was something I just had to do.

“I have always sung, mainly in the bath, and I began taking lessons and decided I wanted to try it as a career.

“It is a life-changing decision but I was lucky enough to meet this talented American director who agreed to come in with me and Unexpected Opera was born.”

The company’s first show will be a re-working of Rossini’s classic Barber of Seville, re-titled The Barber of Savile Row, and Matthew will play the baritone role of Bart – a gentleman’s outfitter.

The tour will visit Tunbridge Wells, Greenwich, Norwich and Cardiff, and has secured extra sponsorship from Millwood Designer Homes, in Tonbridge.

Matthew, who used to pull in a six-figure salary, added: “I am the managing director of the opera company which makes me the PR man, the agent, the admin person, the ticket secretary, the designer and everything else.

“I am even busier now than when I was jetting around Europe solving business problems for multi-national corporations.

“Do I miss the salary? You bet I do. But the satisfaction I get from singing more than compensates for it.”

“For the first time in my life I am doing something for me, something I love and something I just had to do.”

Members of the opera company will be singing for shoppers’ pleasure at Waitrose in Tonbridge on Saturday April 5, at 12.30pm.

For details of the performances of The Barber of Savile Row, visit www.unexpectedopera.com