Opera singer who survived cancer writes song to highlight NHS waiting times

Monica McGhee, 36, has collaborated with tenor Toby Spence and pianist Lee Michael Walton on a new operatic score called About Time, inspired by their experiences with the disease.

Ms McGhee from Motherwell, in North Lanarkshire, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 28, after discovering a lump on her throat.

After undergoing surgery on her neck, she faced a long recovery, including the permanent loss of some of her vocal range.

The Scottish soprano who had performed for the late Queen Elizabeth II and at the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium, was coming into the prime of her career when she received her diagnosis in 2017.

“I found the lump, while I was warming up for a concert, and I was at quite a tipping point in my career,” Ms McGhee told the PA news agency.

“I’d had this rather commercial career coming out of music college.

“And then the few years following that, I was really concentrating on becoming a principal young artist in the opera world, which is incredibly difficult.

“I had lots of auditions coming up and I was in the finals for young artists at European opera houses.”

After being given her diagnosis, doctors told Ms McGhee she needed to have surgery on her neck to remove the tumour on her thyroid.

“I would have traded another body part to be operated on rather than my neck,” she said.

“I’m self-employed doing a job that requires the area that needs to be operated on – it was a whole other level of difficulty.

“You’re trying to sing and still have a career, not let people know that you are sick and not let people think you can’t sing.”

Ms McGhee, who is now cancer-free and is preparing to make her English National Opera principal debut early next year, says she hopes their song gives hope to people undergoing cancer treatment.

She said that while she is grateful her treatment was delivered quickly, she wanted to “lend her voice to anyone who feels unheard, and unseen” dealing with long NHS waiting times.

The song, financially backed by insurer Zurich, aims to give a voice to the 77,000 people waiting more than two months for cancer treatment since GP referral this year.

“We wanted to think about the concept of time and waiting,” Ms McGhee said.

“But that’s not just about waiting for your actual diagnosis or to wait for your operation – there are so many different forms of waiting when you have a cancer illness.

“It’s got maybe some kind of pensive thoughts musically but there is hopefulness in there.”

Ms McGhee, whose career depends on her voice, said it was an “incredibly long waiting game” to have a voice that recovered again.

“I lost the top few notes that are never, ever going to come back,” she said.

Having been accepted onto the National Opera Studio programme in 2020, Ms McGhee’s career is back on track and she is beginning to celebrate the depth her experience brings to her performance.

“I spent the first few years feeling like the broken version of my pre-cancer singer,” she said.

“But I realise opera is often about really heightened emotions.

“It’s often quite tragic and if you have faced trauma, or you’ve faced something that’s quite tragic, then you really connect with these characters.

“I hope now that what I can bring is not the super, super high notes, but a real authenticity to my storytelling on stage.”