artists who rarely, if ever, descend from the lofty ramparts-environment of "Tosca,'' are firmly extinguished after just a few minutes of conversation with Alexander Oliver.

Visiting Bermuda this past week for a short vacation with his old friend, musician Mrs. Marjorie Pettit, the Scottish tenor who sings in most of the great opera houses of the world, talked to The Royal Gazette about his career.

It is a career that has taken him from his native Scotland to Vienna, to England for a 12-year stint with the famous Glyndbourne Opera Festival, Covent Garden and the Welsh National Opera, and the opera houses of the Netherlands, Zurich, Antwerp and Sydney, to name but a few. His next major production will be the role of Bob Boles in Britten's "Peter Grimes'' at the Paris Opera.

Alexander Oliver is in demand around the world for the brilliance he brings to opera's `character' roles, and is famous for what has been described by Mrs.

Pettit as his "formidable intellectual grasp'' of opera's 20th century repertoire.

Rather to his chagrin, he has just turned down a role which perhaps personifies his unusually versatile talent -- that of the clown, Feste, in "Twelfth Night.'' It is Feste, of course, who also sings some of Shakespeare's most memorable songs, including "O mistress mine,'' and "The rain it raineth every day.'' "The Royal Shakespeare Company invited me to open the Stratford season and then take it to the Barbican in London,'' he explained, "but I would have to cancel three major opera productions, as I'm booked up until the end of 1997.'' Enthusing about Bermuda ("I've been absolutely seduced -- it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life.''), he says he felt a special affinity with Gibbet's Island, which he has managed to visit most days.

"Next year, I'm doing the world premiere of an opera written for me, based on Robinson Crusoe, so I sit and think about this role when I'm at Gibbet's.

It is the perfect setting, to sit and listen to the sounds of the Island.

Bermuda has its own voice and music. People should stop and listen to it more often.'' Yes, he says, he would love to sing in Bermuda and confides that he has been working for some time on a one-man show, "which might go down well here. A great, and as yet unfulfilled dream, would be to re-establish my partnership with Marjorie because, in our college days, we did so many wonderful concerts together.'' So how did his career begin? It turns out that it was far from the fields of musical academia.

"Well, I was a late child, a post-war hiccup. My sister says the first inkling she had of my impending arrival in this world was when she saw an extra green ration book propped up on the mantelpiece.'' There in the pub at the Bridge of Allen in Scotland, Alexander Oliver was born: "It was an old-fashioned, working-class pub! At half-past eight my mother was changing beer barrels -- and I was born two hours later.'' The music of his early childhood was the Saturday night sing-alongs that cheered the otherwise rather dour routine of 1950s provincial Scotland.

"I was always obsessed by the theatre, though. Long before I ever saw a puppet show, I was making my own cut-out figures.'' By the time he was 12, he was performing puppet shows with a concert society all over the local area which would soon lead to his own debut as a theatrical performer.

"Well, you see, Peggy Lee was all the rage then -- and the lure of the greasepaint was too much! Before long, I could be found, miming the songs of Peggy Lee and all decked out in a blue lurex frock. Thank goodness videos hadn't been invented then!'' Mr. Oliver has no doubt, however, that his "Peggy Lee period,'' which certainly strained relations with his father, would have a bearing on what he calls "the logical unfolding'' of his career -- that of a character artist, "the notion that you can be anything, anything you want to be.'' His desperate wish to go to drama school was crisply turned down by his father with the observation that his teenaged son had quite enough drama in his life already.

"So then I took up the clarinet and worked very hard at that because I thought if I got into the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, I could fail and then switch to their drama department.'' After just three years of study, he succeeded, and it was there that he met Marjorie Pettit, "who, coincidentally, was my accompanist throughout my Academy years. She is a musician of extreme sensitivity, and a magnificently gifted accompanist.'' Singing was a compulsory subject and although his teacher suggested singing as a career, he shrugged off that advice.

"You see, I was still entertaining illusions about doing drama, but after a while, singing engulfed me. Then, to my absolute astonishment -- I was gobsmacked, actually -- I won the Richard Tauber Competition.'' Having secured Britain's top singing award, it was off to Vienna to study for two years at the National Academy. During the holidays he auditioned for Glyndbourne and joined the company chorus and as understudy to the principals, among them, Richard Lewis.

"I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I remember the first, really big party we had there in that incomparable setting. They'd hired a steel band and everyone doing the conga round the grounds. From the Bridge of Allan to Glyndebourne is pretty heady stuff!'' His mother, however, was less impressed with his rise to this elevated area of the arts -- but left her own indelible mark on the opera world.

"She was quite famous among the opera crowd. I used to sing a lot with the Welsh National Opera and the first thing they'd say was `How are you?' and then, `Where's your mother? When is she coming?' She used to entertain everybody with her harmonica. They'd all go off to the pub together after shows and she would be the entertainer. She ruled everyone with a rod of iron and if she thought someone was `coarse,' she wouldn't let them in and wouldn't let them sing. I'll never forget my big opening night at Glyndebourne. There was I, giving my all on the lyric stage, and she was outside, entertaining all the rich crowd in their Rolls Royces in the car park. There she was, playing `For We're No' Awa' Tae to Bide Awa'! She was enormously elegant, rather tall and beautifully dressed in a posh frock -- a full-length purple velvet job which made her look very regal. Then she'd whip out her mouth organ in case anyone felt like a wee tune! She was entertaining this couple who looked like Maudie Frinton and her husband in the Osbert Lancaster cartoons and they were smiling nervously, muttering `Charming, charming'. Then they drove off with her bag still on the roof of the Rolls and we were all running down the drive after it, with Mother screaming, `My bag! My bag!'' He admits that it is only in the last five years or so that he has been able to put his mother, and her undoubted influence over his life and career, into perspective, and to realise what a colourful character she had been.

"If I developed my career in a certain way, those aspects of my childhood and early years on the stage were a contributing factor -- although I've never had the urge to play the harmonica!'' During Glyndbourne tours, he sang Don Otavio in "Don Giovanni'' and other lyric roles in "Cosi fan Tutti'' and "The Abduction from the Seraglio.'' Scottish tenor says he's led a `charmed life' From Page 23 His debut as a principal with Glyndbourne was Monostatos in "The Magic Flute'' and he then created the role of Brother Timothy in the world premiere of "The Rising of the Moon'' by Nicholas Maw.

"I did all the romantic heroic figures for about ten years because I thought that was the only thing to do, but I became more and more fascinated with the character repertoire. A side benefit, of course, is that it also means you can go on singing for much longer!'' Here at last, he said, was the chance to indulge the acting skills he had always wanted to develop. "In lyric roles, you just stand still and sing as beautifully as you can. I was in the film they made of Monteverdi's `Coronation of Poppea' and I played the female role that originally, in Monteverdi's day, was sung by men -- so we were back to Peggy Lee, right? That Zurich production which they decided to film, was a mega-triumph that shook the opera world by the throat.'' One of the highlights of last year was when he sang Puck, a speaking role, in Benjamin Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream'' for the Netherlands Opera.

"I was the oldest and fattest fairy in the forest! But you know, it worked beautifully, because the mythological Puck was one thousand years old. I played him as being funny, but sinister -- humour can also be quite frightening.'' He has sung the leading role of Assenbach in Britten's "Death in Venice,'' "a very depressing piece because he's such a sad figure who can't make the quantum leap into living, but I do love Britten's music.'' He also sang Britten's "Curlew River'' from the chamber operas, which the composer called his Church Parables.

"I sang that in the Basilica in Venice, and all the female roles are sung by men -- hello, again, Peggy! Actually, I think gender on the stage is fascinating because, if you can act, you can become anything at all, anything -- and that's what is so exciting.'' He has never envied for a moment, he says emphatically, the mega-stars. "I've been very lucky, I've led a charmed professional life, doing all the roles I love. I admire people like Pavarotti, of course, but the notion of standing there in a great big stadium where thousands of people are sitting there, waiting for that high C, must be terrible. I think you have to have a gladatorial mentality so that you can hit and attack the music -- whereas my birth sign is the Crab, so I like to approach things more obliquely.'' At Covent Garden, he remembers especially, the time he sang "Meistersinger'' under Joseph Kripps' baton ("an absolute tyrant'') and the role of the poison dwarf, Mime, in the 1990/91 Wagner `Ring' cycle.

"I did Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro'' with Kiri Te Kanawa. I thought it was my debut -- but it turned out to be hers!'' One of his great moments at the Garden was not in opera at all. He was invited to take part in the famous annual cabaret staged for the Friends of Covent Garden, where he did a parody of "Giselle'' with ballet star, Wayne Sleep.

"I actually wore block shoes and couldn't walk for two weeks after that.

There I was, flushed with triumph, and Freddie Ashton came up to me and said, `You have the best pas-de-bras since Markova!'' Oliver's career has centred around Europe, apart from a series of concerts where he was guest artist with the Chicago Symphony under Rafael Kubelik for the 1980/81 season. This is perhaps strange for an artist who sings a wide repertoire of American music, genuinely loving the cross-over from opera, to jazz to musicals.

"One of the highlights of my career was when I finally made it into a West End musical. I sang the role of the Governor in Bernstein's `Candide' at the Old Vic, and when the overture started on opening night, I thought I was going to explode with excitement -- I was in a real musical at last!'' Mr. Oliver has just released a CD on which he sings the songs of Gershwin and Cole Porter. He would like to bring all these elements together in his projected one-man show -- one half of which has now been completed.

"It would be called `Alexander's Ragtime' and would be a kind of cabaret, with classical references but including the songs of Gershwin and Porter, Noel Coward, and reflecting some aspects of my life, and so on. I would like to bring it to Bermuda, but,'' he adds with a twinkling smile, "I'm certainly not planning to ask Larry Adler to come along and guest on his harmonica!'' Photos by Tony Cordeiro OPERA STAR IN BERMUDA -- International tenor Alexander Oliver is considering putting on a one-man show here.

TENOR Alexander Oliver vacationing in Bermuda