By the time you get to the climax of the song, you have full operatic technique happening, but it's been such a gradual progression that you don't even realise that you're listening to an operatic finale in a sense. This has made people classically curious.

-Looking back to the beginning of your career, you were put together by Simon Cowell. How was the whole process of the band forming?
It was a very long process actually. The thing is, people always compare that to his talent shows, and it has nothing to do with that, you know? It was him being an A&R man in a record company, and not being in charge of TV.

It was literally trying to make and raise a new project. It was maybe two years he was auditioning people, hundreds of people before they found the four of us.

For us, the situation was very awkward. We met two days before we started recording in the studio, we hadn't known each other before. There was no vision about what Il Divo was going to be, or what it was going to sound like.

All we had was the four of us, with our individual tastes, voices and musical backgrounds, and a handful of demo tapes of songs that Simon Cowell liked. They were pop songs, and they'd thrown us into the studio with a producer. They just said sing this, make it sound great.

The third or fourth time that we re-recorded 'Unbreak My Heart' was the first time we thought...yes, we're onto something! So, it went on, the rest is now history and we're on our sixth album.

-Does Simon Cowell still have much of an input in your music and career, or has it moved on now?
He's still very hands-on actually, he's still very passionate. A journalist said we're probably the only act that's lasted so long over the years, and we realised...yeah. We've been a band for so many years now working with him.

It's been easier working with him every year. First of all, he trusts us - we had our own career before, that was what was different as well. It wasn't through a TV show or anything like that, so I guess we had a bit more credibility in that sense. Sorry, I don't mean that in a patronising way, but you see what I mean by that?

On that last album, from the A&R to the keys of the songs, the vocal arrangements, the finales, the mixes - we had a lot of input in that sense.

-Your career has been long and illustrious - a highlight must have been performing the official World Cup song in 2006. How was that?
One of the greatest things about that was standing in a stadium full of more than 80,000 people - that's the biggest crowd we've ever sung to live.

You could feel the vibrant atmosphere, because everyone was so excited about the World Cup. We were a bit of embellishment around that, it was about the football, of course. Just being part of the whole event was great.

-Were there any nerves ahead of something that huge, or do you take it in your stride?
Yeah, we kinda do. The last thing we would want to do is sound blasé about it, but the thing is - we enjoy this very much. We've been performers all our lives, so obviously you get a kick out of standing in front of an audience - the more, the better. We do enjoy that, we love it.

-For people coming to see you for the first time on that tour, what can they expect from the Il Divo concert experience?
For people who are going to experience it for the first time, they're going to enjoy themselves. We've been working on this particular performance as far back as last August, when we peformed at the Colliseum here in London.

We debuted five songs off the new album, and that's a very large ratio to add to a new concert. Most people, when they come to a concert, they want to hear the songs they already know. We were very nervous to launch straight into a new concept and a new show, with over a third of the songs being new material.

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, so this is the show that we're gonna bring around the world. People who have seen us before will find that it's head and shoulders above our last tour.

Female First - Alistair McGeorge (Follow Me: @AlistairMcG)

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