Entertainment

Katherine Jenkins: I speak to my late father before every performance

The opera singer said she wishes her father could have met her two children.
The opera singer said she wishes her father could have met her two children. The opera singer said she wishes her father could have met her two children.

Katherine Jenkins has said she asks her late father to bless her voice and concerts before every performance.

The Welsh opera singer, 39, lost her father, Selwyn, to cancer when she was 15 years old.

Jenkins, 39, told Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast: “I do feel him with me a lot, since he passed.

“I know some people believe in things like this and some people don’t but I’ve had quite vivid dreams where we have talked and because I don’t know him as an adult, and I don’t know in my adult self him, but we have conversations which is so interesting and I am always so fascinated by it.

“Whenever I step out on stage I always without fail have a word with him and ask him to bless my voice and bless my concert so he is always in my thoughts.”

She added: “I wish he could have seen my kids.”

Jenkins said she had a “great childhood” but that “things definitely changed” after losing her father at such a young age.

She said her father was her main carer, as he retired early.

“He was my biggest supporter, he would drive me round to piano lessons, etcetera,” she said.

The mezzo-soprano also spoke about going back to work weeks after the birth of her second child, her son Xander, who was born in April 2018.

She also has a daughter, Aaliyah, with husband Andrew Levitas.

Jenkins said: “I did a smaller one (a show) when he was five weeks and a bigger one when he was seven weeks and the thing is, it’s so hard.

“You know, in classical music we book so far in advance, we actually book things 18 months ahead and obviously you can’t plan when you are going to get pregnant, so I had to cancel quite a lot of international stuff in the time that I was not able to fly when I had him and then after that point you sort of feel, now if I cancel these I could technically do them, is there a way I can do them, and get back into the bubble as quick as I can.

“I don’t like letting people down.”

Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast is available from acast.com