TO understand the work ethic that motivates tenor Noah Stewart and has taken him from Harlem, New York around the world to sing in some of the most prestigious opera houses, you have to hear him talk about his mother.

A single mum who brought up Stewart and his older sister, she recently retired from her job of 44 years as a cashier.

“She left New Orleans on a Friday, arrived in New York on a bus on Saturday, went looking for a job on Sunday and started working on Monday. That was her first job and it was her career for 44 years. She has always raised me with the understanding if you want something in life you have to go and get it,” says the 34-year-old preparing to take the lead role of Don Jose in Scottish Opera’s production of Carmen, opening on October 7 in Glasgow and touring to Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh.

The first black singer to top the UK classical music chart, he has come a long way from working as a receptionist at Carnegie Hall and waiting on tables in restaurants.

“I discovered classical music much later than most of my colleagues. I don’t come from a musical family, although they were originally from New Orleans. My mom raised us in the Baptist church and my first musical memory as a kid was listening to the gospel choir, clapping along, and feeling emotional,” he recalls.

“I remember my mom cleaning the house every Saturday with music on, it was blues, r’n’b or gospel. It wasn’t until junior high school when I auditioned for the choir that I found classical music.”

He entered his first competition, New England Music Festival, at the age of 12 and won, earning money while still at school doing voiceovers for Sesame Street and singing jingles on commercials. Stewart discovered opera when he went on to study at La Guardia High School of Music and Performing Arts, appeared in La constanza in amor vince l'inganno, and quickly realised the challenges he faced if a career in opera beckoned.

“People who looked like me from my neighbourhood in Harlem did not sing classical music. When I turned on the TV and saw shows such as Live from the Lincoln Centre I didn’t see any people of colour at all represented,” he says.

Stewart went on to train at Juilliard after a chance meeting with soprano Leontyne Price and his path was set. “She was the first person of colour I ever saw sing in a classical technique, in a video of Verdi’s Requiem. I was obsessed with her and what she represented in terms of a person of colour in a very European artform. I know she has inspired so many people but she was the catalyst for my career. I wanted to be a male representation of her level of artistry.”

The intense, competitive environment at Juilliard prepared Stewart for the tough route that lay ahead, though he admits after eight years of music study there and at La Guardia he was burnt out. While his teenage friends went out every weekend drinking and partying, Stewart stayed at home to save his voice. Months before accepting a scholarship to continue studying in the city, he backed out. “I broke my mother’s heart because I really didn’t have a plan, other than taking lessons and discovering NYC. I was 21,” he says.

Reception, shop and restaurant jobs followed as Stewart took time out to kick back his heels. He says it was valuable time, well spent, teaching him to connect with people. A talent put to good use, he believes, in the world of opera.

There was a defining moment when he was working as a receptionist in Carnegie Hall and learning a song for an audition. Humming to himself, his boss asked about the noise. “I told her I was practising a song and she said I couldn’t do that because it was distracting. It killed me inside, and that’s when I decided to really pursue music,” he says firmly.

Stewart has now sung Don Jose in Carmen more than any other role, a fact that delights him when he remembers the bald comments made by a customer when he was still working in a restaurant.

“I sang happy birthday to one of the guests and a woman came up to me and said, ‘You have a beautiful voice, what do you want to sing?’ I said opera and she replied that was too bad, you can’t sing opera because you’re black, ‘You can’t be Don Jose.’ That comment really shocked me, made me angry and set me off to pursue something that was not the norm, in terms of being a rapper or a pop star.”

With that motivation, Stewart auditioned for San Francisco Opera and made his debut as the lead in Verdi’s Macbeth with 10 minutes’ notice when the tenor suddenly took ill. He went on to sing at Covent Garden as Hassan in Miss Fortune, as Don Jose at the Royal Albert Hall and to appear in front of 80,000 people at Wembley singing the Star Spangled Banner ahead of an American football game.

Unsurprisingly, his mother is “over the moon” with his success and he hopes she will make it to Edinburgh to hear him in Carmen. What next for the tenor who specialises in breaking the mould?

“I’m obsessed with pop music. I want to take that freshness of pop culture and bring it to opera. I want to keep the tradition of opera in terms of the singing and the language but I want to bring in a new approach to it, which is not so elitist.”

Carmen, Scottish Opera, from October 7 at Theatre Royal, Glasgow, touring to Aberdeen, Inverness and Edinburgh. Visit www.scottishopera.org.uk