A RARE chance to hear one of the world's foremost tenors is being offered at Malvern Theatres.

Despite being in his early 30's, Ian Bostridge has already won two prestigious Gramo-phone Awards for his interpretations of Schubert.

He only embarked on a full-time career as a singer after becoming a post-doctoral fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Since then he has sung with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Rotterdam, New York, Los Angeles, London and Boston and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The Malvern concert is one of only two UK dates on a spring tour taking in concert halls in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Cologne and Paris.

It will see him perform 11 Schubert songs and 14 songs by Hugo Wolf, set to poems by Romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff.

It concludes the series of three concerts in an "International Lieder" series that has seen Barbara Bonney and Thomas Allen at the Forum Theatre.

Tickets are £16-£22 (students £10) from 01684 892277. It will start at 7.30pm on Tuesday, April 8.