Popstar to Operastar Myleene: I don't want to create a showbiz monster!

Presenter of ITV1's Popstar to Operastar (Sundays) Myleene Klass tells TV Times magazine about her two great passions – music and her family..

Do you love opera?
"Yes, I don’t remember not having opera in the house. My dad used to play it everywhere. I would make a mix-tape and choose two pieces of Kylie to put on it while my dad would pick two pieces of opera. So we’d be driving down the motorway, I’d have the Locomotion and Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi going, and my dad would have Wagner or Mozart! But as much as I love Kylie, I always had a real appreciation for opera."

So it is part of your heritage?
"My grandmother Carolina was a Viennese and Austrian chef, but an opera singer as well. She used to sing to me while she was baking cakes! I don’t know if she performed on stage, but my grandfather definitely did and all of them before him. If you go to the Royal Opera House in Vienna, their names are on the plaques. The makers of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? want me to do the show so they can follow that line."

How is it different to other singing?
"Not getting too technical, but essentially for opera you have to lower your larynx and sing with a yawn. The reason popstars sing so well with smiles is because that lifts your larynx. Also, the opera songs are so well known that people can quickly hear if it’s working or not. With pop you can hide a little bit – you can even mime!"

Have you introduced your children (Ava, three, and three-month-old Hero) to music?
"Yes, I think it’s important that they have that influence from live music and classical music. There’s a stigma attached to it and I don’t want them to have that. Ava has a good understanding of classical music already, whenever I play a piece she’ll ask what the story is behind it. We also play the game of Name the Instruments so she can tune her ear into it. I’m not trying to create some showbiz monster; I just want her to have an understanding of it, and if she wants to go to the opera when she’s older then that’s her choice."

On top of presenting you are a magazine columnist and have your own baby range at Mothercare... So things are pretty busy then?
"I had to find a way to bring my children to work with me because my job isn’t a normal 9-to-5. I don’t know where I’m going to be tomorrow or next week so I had to be more enterprising and I found the perfect job – I mean who’s going to say babies can’t come to Mothercare?!"

So what’s your secret to keeping going?
"I live on coffee – I don’t know what I’d do without it!"