Golden Anniversary 2023

“I was seriously ill and probably wouldn’t make it,” recalls Jonathan.

“There was a slight chance I might survive but if I did, I would never sing again. I would be like a stroke victim, seriously handicapped.”

Within 48 hours, the famous singer who has performed at all the world’s great concert venues and delighted audiences on programmes such as Songs of Praise, had been transformed from a robust tenor to a dying man.

Jonathan recalls watching his plight as if he was suspended high above his hospital bed as his loved ones gathered around him. Just as he entered his darkest hour, doctors were stunned at his sudden recovery.

“My cousin Simeon came up and sat by my bed and I remember waking up and not being aware and looking around and I could see a doctor there doing tests,” explains Jonathan.

“Simeon was crying, saying we almost lost you – and I think I said, I’ve got to get back to work – and I’m lying there with tubes stuck into me.

“The doctors came round, about six of them around the bed, and I am saying hello, trying to get their attention.”

Then the consultant announced that Jonathan had made a full recovery. He said: “I know you are Christian people and the only word I can use is miraculous.”

Adds Jonathan: “They couldn’t find any logical explanation why I was okay – people can choose to believe this or not – I’m not trying to hoodwink people. Some people think it was just a will to survive. All I know is that I shouldn’t be here but I am and each day is a good day. I love my wife, I love my children, I love my life, I love people.

“I believe that I was made better so that through my singing and my talking other people could be healed.”

That was more than 30 years ago.

Perhaps the most miraculous aspect of Jonathan’s career is he never set out to be an opera singer. Growing up in a Christian household he did some Gospel singing. As he grew up, he battled with his faith which did not come fully alive until he went to university where he joined the Christian Union. There Jonathan met people who did not just talk about Christianity, but actually lived it.

“I found a living faith, I could see that it made a difference to how they lived their lives,” he says.

“It wasn’t that they had a secular life and a religious life – it was one life. I know a lot of people have a dramatic 'Damascus road' experience, but I think it is a process in which God enlightens you and reveals himself and then you find that your heart has become warmed.

“It is a mystical thing, but I believed that what God had to say in Jesus was true, that he lived and he died for me because he loved me and he lives now and he still cares about me and the state of the world.”

At university, Jonathan was studying techniques in classical singing and decided to see “where it would take me.”

Not long after meeting his wife, he proposed – but she only agreed to marry him if he won the local Redhill and Reigate music festival.

“I went and won it and she was so shocked, she had to marry me,” he laughs.

“My singing teacher persuaded me to audition for Trinity College of Music. I won the Peter Pears singing competition in 1984 and soon critics were hailing me as the ‘new voice’ of opera.

“The next thing was I was being invited to Glyndebourne, and I haven’t stopped working since. I have gone round the world singing although I still think I am just starting.”

A Special Voice

Music lovers across the world have delighted in a special quality about Jonathan Veira’s voice, something which sets him apart from other great singers. It’s not just the voice, it is the unique way he has of using it.

“I am deeply grateful when people come up and say, ‘You touched me.’

“I’m not aware of it as I am doing it. Somebody said to me it’s not just that depth, there is something about the way you use words and sing from a particular place in your heart that touches people emotionally and not just rationally. That is what I try to do”.

Music is a great healer, Jonathan believes. It is also a means of preaching the Good News. He regularly mixes his musical evenings with talking nights, speaking about his own life, faith and helping the audience to smile.

“It’s important to make people laugh,” he says.

“It amazes me the amount of healing that goes on and the number of stories that I hear. People come and say, I lost my husband last year, I haven’t been out for a year, I haven’t laughed for a year, I never thought I could laugh again. I felt a burden lift as you made me laugh.

“It's common for two or three hundred people to queue up to talk to me and talk of the uplifting nature of what went on. Yes, God has given me a voice and I am touched that people will listen. But God wants to hear your story so tell it to him and in the telling, there comes a healing. That is what it is all about.”