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Paul Robert Potts (born 13 October 1970) is a British tenor who won the first series of ITV's Britain's Got Talent in 2007, singing an operatic aria, "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's Turandot. Potts was a manager at Carphone Warehouse who also performed in amateur opera from 1999 to 2003.
Early life
Potts was born in Kingswood (a suburb of Bristol, England), and raised in Fishponds, Bristol, by his father Roland, a bus driver, and mother, Yvonne (née Higgins), a supermarket cashier. He has two brothers and one sister. Potts attended St. Mary Redcliffe school, where he developed his love of singing. He also sang with the choir at Chester Park Junior School and with the choirs at several Bristol churches, including Christ Church. Potts said in interviews that he had been bullied in school, and that experience may have had made him lack self-confidence. He has also said that his voice had always been a source of solace in the past when he was bullied.
He earned an Honours degree in 1993 from University College Plymouth St Mark & St John, majoring in Humanities. In 1996, Potts was elected the youngest councillor for Bristol City Council, for the Liberal Democrats and served until 2003. Potts was a manager at mobile phone store Carphone Warehouse in Bridgend. After winning Britain's Got Talent, Potts took a six-month sabbatical from his job, and resigned on 5 March 2008.Live in concert at Foxwoods Hotel and Casino in Ledyard, CT, 5 March 2008
Singing career
Potts first sang opera in 1999 in a karaoke competition, dressed as Luciano Pavarotti. That same year, he appeared in the Michael Barrymore talent show My Kind of Music. Although he did not take first place, he won £8,000 — enough to help pay for vocal lessons in Italy, during which he was selected to perform in front of Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli. He did not however, as was claimed at the time by newspapers such as The Daily Mail and The Sun, receive tuition from Pavarotti.
Potts began in the minor roles of The Prince of Persia and the Herald in Puccini's Turandot for the Bath Opera, an amateur company, in 1999. He then performed leading roles on four occasions : Don Basilio in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in 2000; Don Carlos in Verdi's Don Carlos in 2001; Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2003; and Radames in Verdi's Aida in 2003. He also performed the role of the Chevalier des Grieux in Puccini's Manon Lescaut for the Southgate Opera Company in London, an amateur company, in May 2003. Additionally, he sang with a small ensemble from the Royal Philharmonic in front of an audience of 15,000 and toured northern Italy as a soloist as part of his music classes there.
In several interviews, Potts revealed that he performed Aida despite doctors' wishes to remove an adrenal tumour they had discovered during his illness from a burst appendix, and performed Manon Lescaut shortly after the surgery to remove it. Potts broke his collarbone and suffered whiplash in a bicycle accident in 2003, which prevented him from pursuing opera as a career. The mishap and financial difficulties that followed led him to enter Britain's Got Talent despite not having sung for in years.http://forum.unrealitytv.co.uk/index.php?topic=1533.0 Retrieved 30 December 2007
Britain's Got Talent
Potts' auditioned for Simon Cowell's new talent show Britain's Got Talent at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 17 March 2007. The audition was televised on ITV1 in the UK on 9 June 2007. Potts sang the full rendition of Giacomo Puccini's "Nessun Dorma", which was condensed for broadcast, for which he received a standing ovation from the audience of 2,000 people.
In the semi-final on 14 June 2007, Potts performed the main verses of Andrea Bocelli's "Con te partirò". He progressed to the final after receiving the highest public vote in that show.
He performed "Nessun Dorma" again for his finale on 17 June 2007, as well as an encore after he won the competition. Potts defeated co-favourite with the bookmakers, Connie Talbot, and received the higher percentage of two million votes cast to win £100,000, and the honour to perform at the Royal Variety Performance on 3 December 2007, in front of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Post-BGT career
In the United States, he was profiled on a National Public Radio programme called Day to Day, and appeared live on NBC's programme Today. The programme questioned the "undiscovered" nature of Potts' talent. He was portrayed on the show as simply a mobile-phone salesman, whereas he had in fact appeared in six amateur opera productions and in a concert for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and had plans for a summer tour with that orchestra. Potts responded saying that he had not claimed to be completely untutored, that he had never performed any concert for pay and was therefore amateur. He also said that the lessons he had received in Italy had been paid for from his own savings.
On 8 July 2007, Potts performed at a Katherine Jenkins concert at Margam Park, "Katherine In The Park". Jenkins extended an invitation for him to sing his rendition of "Nessun Dorma" at the concert. On 16 July 2007, his debut album One Chance was released in UK, and the album claimed the number one spot in the UK Album Chart the following week. In December 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented Potts with a platinum disc for having sold 2,000,000 copies of his album One Chance.
On 13 December 2007, he performed in Leipzig in the live television broadcast of the 13th annual José Carreras Gala, accompanied by the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg under the direction of Scott Lawton. On 17 January 2008, he began his 2008 concert series at the Pavilion Theatre in Rhyl, Wales, which covered 97 tour concerts in 85 cities across 23 countries and ended on 12 November 2008. This included three outdoor classical music concerts with the Finnish violinist Linda Brava and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra at Sofiero Palace, Sundbyholms Castle and Slottskogsvallen from 24 to 26 July.
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