He’s smart, principled and obsessed with Johann Sebastian Bach. What’s not to like about Reginald Mobley?

Careerwise, the American countertenor is on the up and up. In 2020, he became the first-ever programming consultant for Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, tasked with diversifying its repertoire, and in 2023 he was handpicked to sing at the Coronation of King Charles III.

“It was very surreal,” he smiles, recalling the honour, the jetlag and having to wake at four in the morning to leave his hotel in Olympia and walk from Victoria to Westminster Abbey. “I remember bumping into Dame Emma Thompson and almost knocking her over, getting into an under-caffeinated staring contest with Katy Perry because I was obsessed with the colour of her dress, and not even recognising who those people were.”

“I’d met the King before – I knew him when he was just a prince,” he jokes. “I knew how kind and supportive he was, not just of music and the arts but of conservation and ecology. But it was also kind of weird being a Bostonian. I didn’t throw any tea into any body of water; I just sat there and shovelled my coal.” [This, Mobley explains, is...