During the course of our discussion of “The Devil Rides Out,” last night on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, Roy and I touched upon the fact that Christopher Lee’s great regret in life was not pursuing a career as a professional opera singer.

In his autobiography, “Tall, Dark and Gruesome” (later reissued as “Lord of Misrule”), Lee talks about how, whenever he was Sweden, he would make it a point, in his downtime, to slip off with amateur opera companies and tour with them incognito. He filmed “Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” in Sweden, and for a time he was engaged to Henriette von Rosen. His Swedish connections were such that when Von Rosen’s father threw up a final impediment, that he would allow Lee to marry his daughter only if he could obtain permission from the King of Sweden, Lee was able to so – like something out of a fairy tale in itself!

Ultimately, Lee did not marry Von Rosen (the situation seemed very high-maintenance), but he did attract the attention of tenor Jussi Björling. He recounts the story, as well as his family history in the opera, in one of the videos linked below.

First, here’s Lee in an off-the-cuff demonstration of his singing ability, with selections from “The Flying Dutchman” and “The Damnation of Faust;” and then, to keep it seasonal, he recites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”:

Much later, he shares an anecdote and proves that he’s still got the pipes:

Finally, Lee recounts his experience with Björling and his family’s role in bringing opera to Australia:

Of course, as he points out, if he had, after all, become a professional opera singer, his career would have ended decades earlier. But as an actor, he was able to continue to do what he loved until the end of his long and fruitful life.

Really, when you think about, is there all that much difference between gothic horror and a life in the opera?