Until lockdown changed everything Ian Storey, who lives near Leominster, was one of the most in-demand tenors in the world, a singer who was the first – indeed the only – choice of Daniel Barenboim when casting Tristan and he sang Otello for Placido Domingo.

But we all know what happened to the world of entertainment last March, and it was no different for Ian, who saw every date in his diary cancelled way into the future.

"My last job, singing Herod in Salome, in Melbourne finished at the end of February – it was a fantastic production," he says, adding that when he first saw pictures of the costumes he did wonder what he'd taken on.

"But as the director spoke and said why he wanted to do it a certain way, it all made sense.

"After that, the work pretty much evaporated. During the last couple of weeks of rehearsals news began to filter through and the occasional person went down with Covid.

"After Melbourne I flew to see friends in New Zealand, then set off home via Hong Kong."

Shortly after arriving home Ian began to feel sick, but although he was tested (at the back of his house in case anyone saw!) he never got a definitive result, but he's certain he had contracted Covid. A little later he learned that one of his agents in Italy had died.

"I had missed most of the early part of the pandemic while I was in Australia, but once I was back it had all exploded, and all the work was cancelled. At that point I'd had work booked into 2022 but of course everything went straight out of the window, because no one could plan anything anymore."

Despite many opera houses in Europe attempting to put on concerts – "At the end of last year, La Scala did an Aida in concert, where a guy I knew was singing, but he got sick and had to pull out. Instead of cancelling they got someone else in" – Ian says he was in no rush to get back. "Most of my life revolves around exercising common sense and how can you make sensible decisions about something you don't understand?"

Recognising that his working life now looked very different he had to acknowledge that this had an unfortunate knock-on effect.

"When we went into the second lockdown I realised that this was going to be a long haul and with money running out I needed to find a job where I could earn enough to pay the bills, but not be in contact with many people."

Initially, he says, he saw the lockdown as an opportunity to enjoy an extended holiday in the countryside around his home, "but by the beginning of December last year it was getting really serious."

And then he had a lightbulb moment and realised that he had the means to both keep himself occupied, revisit a skill he acquired long before his life in opera, and make some money.

"I was sitting in my house one day when I though, "I still have all my woodworking tools, and I still had one plank of the teak from which I'd made my first piece of furniture when I was 17 - a desk which sold it to my local GP for £350.

"So in early December I decided I'd have to get my tools out, and I went through the old wood shed and found some nice timber that I'd forgotten I had – oak, beech, ash, sycamore. However, I discovered that I'd left my box of lathe tools in an outdoor shed and they were a bit rusty, so I spent a couple of hours cleaning and oiling them."

Ian had learned wood-turning at Loughborough where he trained as a cabinet-maker: "I used to make little jewellery boxes, big enough for just one ring, and I sold them to the jeweller for a couple of quid and he sold them on for £5. "

Having bought a new lathe and uncovered his workbench, it was time to start: "I set myself a target of January 1 to turn my first piece," he says. "And if my skills were still there, I could do them relatively quickly.

"So on January 1, I was in the workshop and put a block of beech on the lathe and started turning for the first time in 33 years. Then a friend in America said 'I'd like to buy the first thing you make'. She also said that she wanted to pay the right price for it, so that's what I did, and I've since sold to Belgium, more pieces have gone to America and to Australia.

Hereford Times: Ian rediscovered his love of working with wood when Covid saw his operatic engagements vanishIan rediscovered his love of working with wood when Covid saw his operatic engagements vanish

One piece Ian particularly enjoyed making was a vase in laburnum that was bought by someone on Spain. "There was a lot of interest in that piece when I put it on facebook," Ian reports.

"It's a peculiar thing," he says. "The first couple of pieces I made I was ecstatically happy at creating something with my hands again. I was puzzled for a few days that I was so happy.

"I had previously spent nine months of the year in cities with lots of people, and for the days before I left home I'd be tetchy and when I got home I'd sleep for 24 hours, but when I'm away I'm perfectly happy because I'm doing what I love doing.

"Then I realised that I'd trained as a cabinet maker. It was the thing I loved and I was very good at it. My tutor once told me it had been a joy teaching me because I was the only kid he'd ever taught who was better than him!

"I started to realise that there are a lot of parallels between these two sides of my life, something I hadn't seen before.

"Sitting at a desk designing a piece is similar to sitting at the piano to learn a role, formulating ideas about the character. And that's no different to designing a piece of furniture.

"In making a piece of furniture you can discover that the grain of the wood wants to do something you hadn't anticipated and the same is true of characters I sing," says Ian, explaining that his concept of a character can be confounded when he finds "they want to do something else".

The finishing of a piece is, he adds, the same as getting on stage and performing a role. "The difference is that, when I finish a performance it's gone, and making a piece is more tangible – it's there forever."

Ian is not alone in finding creativity in another discipline during lockdown and he was invited to submit work to a three-day festival of classical music and visual art as part of the 2021 Kensington and Chelsea Arts Week, which featured five live chamber concerts by internationally renowned artists to accompany an exhibition of artworks created by classical musicians during the pandemic when concert halls were silent.

For Ian, the rediscovery of a skill he thought he might have forgotten has been an unexpected silver lining to the pandemic. "There is no reason why the two sides of my creativity can't work in tandem."

The joy is slightly, very slightly, tinged with sadness though as he says, having experienced the lows of depression: "How the hell didn't I realise this 10 years ago? I would have been much happier."