The 75-year-old retired French teacher who sings opera on TikTok and in parks

In quiet pockets of Woodlands Crescent Park on a Thursday evening, those out for an evening walk might chance upon an unassuming elderly man running through vocal scales armed with a pitch app glowing from his mobile phone.   

The 75-year-old often walks back and forth on the viewing deck, his voice steady, unhurried and resonant, floating across the park. 

Despite some curious stares, Mr Low Choon Yong, with his signature tucked-in crisp shirt and pants, never lets up and will climb those notes, going higher each time. 

He remains unabashed and works on his vocal exercises over the loud thumps of rambunctious boys playing ball and the huffing of evening joggers all around. 

“Some people appreciate my singing, but some don’t like it,” he said, unfazed. 

Then, with a small laugh, he added: “That’s normal."

Mr Low isn't an attention-seeking individual. The park is chosen simply because it is the only place he can sing without disturbing the neighbours, a stage selected out of courtesy, not vanity.

When we met in that park early last month, the songs he had chosen for his practice were from the Italian opera La bohème and a Chinese song in preparation for an upcoming performance in April next year at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

For a while, the neighbourhood regulars had become accustomed to the "uncle" who sings opera in the park nearly every morning and evening, but lately they've been stopping him for selfies and sometimes even asking him to sing a few bars. 

"I just sing for fun, but suddenly, people know me," said Mr Low almost sheepishly as we sat on the bench earlier that afternoon. 

Known as SG French Tutor on TikTok, a reference to his time teaching the French language, his account features him singing trending music in an operatic style and has garnered more than 30,000 followers and 2.5 million likes.

"A lot of the comments are so heartwarming, they are so kind and generous," chuckled Mr Low. 

In addition to the praise and adoration from local fans, his videos have attracted comments from singers such as jazz-pop star Laufey and American media personality and businesswoman Paris Hilton.

All this newfound fame began one evening when he was having dinner with his youngest daughter. Over dinner, Mr Low told his daughter, Ms Angela Low, 29, that he wanted to share his singing technique with young people. 

"In that case, let's try TikTok," said Ms Low. They picked a cheeky line from American singer Sabrina Carpenter's hit Espresso: "I'm working late because I'm a singer." 

They posted the video one evening in September of last year at around 10pm, thinking nothing of it. 

While Mr Low was making his way home, his daughter called him excitedly and said the video had already hit 40,000 views. 

The 10-second video has now amassed 1.7 million views on TikTok, and that's not even his most-watched video. 

His operatic version of repeatedly singing the word "fein" from rapper Travis Scott's song racked up 4.3 million views. 

"One of the very popular videos and the easiest one," he admitted. 

As we chatted well into the evening, it became clear that singing has been a constant in Mr Low's life, whether it was during his younger days as a teacher or while he was studying for his master's degree in France. 

Even through particularly trying times, it has been his anchor throughout a lifetime of starts, stops and second acts.

PRELUDES AND OVERTURES

Long before social media, Mr Low was a boy in a kitchen with his five  siblings in Yishun, helping his father make chay tow kway (fried carrot cake). 

As the wafts of steam billowed and garlic hung thick in the air, the radio blared Teochew opera. It was there that his love for singing began.  

"I've always loved singing from a young age," he said. "Every day, my father played his Teochew opera. That was how I started to love music."

Mr Low joked that his father had a relatively "relaxed" life as a hawker, as he was only in charge of steaming, while he and his siblings toiled over prep work, such as cutting garlic, grinding rice and pounding chilli. 

Even in his schooling years, Mr Low was never shy about his love for singing. 

"Every time there's a music lesson, I put up my hand (to volunteer)," he said. 

At the age of 18, he entered the Teachers' Training College as he felt teaching was more suited to his personality. 

"As a young kid, I didn't like to fight with others," he said with a small smile.

"So very early on, I asked what was the best thing for me to do? I realised teaching may be the simplest way of life, you don't need to go out and 'fight' with people," he said referring to the competitiveness in a corporate setting.  

While singing had always been part of his early school years, Mr Low said it took a pause during his secondary school years.

By the time he got to Teachers' Training College, he realised just how much he missed singing. He saw a poster calling for choir members and signed up immediately. 

"That was my first time in a proper choir," he said. The Metro Philharmonic Society Choir was led by Leong Yoon Pin, one of Singapore's most respected composers, and it opened a new world for Mr Low.

"The beauty of choral singing is that harmony between the parts and how they blend together nicely," he said. 

After graduating as a physical education and Chinese teacher, he continued to perform with one of Singapore's earliest community choirs. He sang actively through the 1970s before stopping for more than 25 years, as work and life got in the way. 

PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS? (DO YOU SPEAK FRENCH?) 

By his late twenties, Mr Low had already spent several years teaching Chinese and physical education, quietly earning a reputation as the teacher who sang. 

"Even when I was out of the scene, I would still sing to myself," said Mr Low. "When I walked down the corridor, I would be humming a tune."

"They called me Liu Wen Zheng because I sang so much," he said, referring to the Taiwanese heartthrob sensation of that time, known for his smooth voice and immaculate grooming.  

In 1977, at the age of 27, he received a sports scholarship that would have sent him to France for training. 

He began taking intensive French lessons at the Alliance Française in preparation, but the offer was later withdrawn when the organisers realised the scholarship was meant for degree holders. 

By 1980, after eight years in the classroom, Mr Low decided it was time for a change, but he continued with his French lessons anyway.

In 1983, he received a French Government Scholarship administered by Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB). This was part of a bilateral programme to train educators for the then French-Singapore Institute.

The institute was set up in the 1980s through a partnership between the EDB and the French government to train local engineers. In the 1990s, it was merged into Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP), and its programmes are now housed under NYP’s School of Engineering.

In France, he attended the University of Besançon, a renowned institution known for training teachers of French as a second language. There, in a cold university town tucked near the Swiss border, he threw all his energy into studying. 

"I locked myself in my room," he admitted. "Weekdays, weekends, I just read and read."  His effort paid off and even professors who never taught him knew his name.

Initially, the scholarship had been offered for a bachelor's programme, but Mr Low's performance impressed his professors so much that they fast-tracked him into the master's course.

At the end of his three years, his professors urged him to stay for a doctorate. He was tempted as he had begun research linking language to how the brain perceives time and space, but the bond he'd signed with the EDB weighed heavily on his mind. 

"If I didn't go back, my guarantors would have to pay," he said. 

So in 1986, he flew back to Singapore fluent in French, with the hope of one day returning to visit the university and his professors. 

The years went by and for nearly 40 years Mr Low never found the time to go back. 

"I felt that if I wanted to go back, it would be too late," he said quietly, his voice thick. "Now I'm 75. My professor is probably gone." 

A happier coda to his French adventure came this month, when Mr Low returned to France for the first time since 1986 to visit the university and his professor, who was still alive. 

He recalled how when he first returned to Singapore after his studies, he taught French at the French-Singapore Institute to serve out his scholarship bond for three years, before later moving into freelance translation and private tutoring.

In 1988, he got married and some 14 years later became the owner of a provision store in 2002, working from 6am till 10pm, seven days a week. 

He said the business was good, but the life was crushing. 

“I didn’t have time to sing. I didn’t even have the strength to hum,” he said.

In 2006, his marriage ended. He did not dwell on the details, except to say that he lost almost everything: money, his home and all his energy. 

Then, three years later in 2009, he met a Thai woman and moved to Bangkok to live with her. 

Those were his quietest years, but also, in a way, his most musical. "I joined a choir there," he said. "I kept practising."

He describes a routine that is both disciplined and meditative: singing every morning and evening, carefully maintaining his technique to prevent his voice from tiring. 

With the right technique, he said, "you can practise for hours".

He realised then that singing was an integral part of his life, especially when faced with problems. 

"Every time I feel down, I purposely tell myself, now you must go and do your singing practice," he said.

"When I'm practising my singing, everything lifts. I forget about everything else. It's just me and the music."

After 13 years in Bangkok, Mr Low returned to Singapore alone at the end of 2022. A friend had called him, urging him to come back while he was still healthy. "He said, if you wait until you're bedridden, it's too late. So I came back," said Mr Low. 

FROM BEL CANTO TO TIKTOK 

It wasn't until the year 2000, when he was 50, that he learned to sing properly.

The bel canto technique, Italian for "beautiful singing", emphasises breath, resonance and ease, producing a voice that sounds effortless yet fills a space completely.

For years, he had been singing with the wrong technique, forcing his voice until it hurt. A chance theatre workshop in 1999 at the French Embassy helped him realise his mistake. 

"They told me, you're still holding back, let go," he recalled. "And I realised I had been sending my voice to the wrong place all along."

When I asked if opera singing was any different from choir work, he shook his head almost before I'd finished the question. 

The technique, he explained, was the same; the same breath, the same lift of sound, the same discipline that makes the voice ring clear and whole, whether in a concert hall or under a park lamppost.

After nearly two decades of mastering the proper technique, Mr Low now passes it on. 

Every other Sunday, near the park by Nicoll Highway MRT, he gathers with a small circle of friends to warm up their voices and run scales. 

On a Sunday morning, I was with Mr Low at one of these lessons. The lesson that morning was smaller than the usual three to four friends, just Mr Low and retiree Mr Henry Tan, 80, one of his regulars. 

They stood face-to-face and started breathing exercises, the air filling and being expelled from their lungs deliberately and exhaling slowly. 

Mr Low lifted a hand to his own face, fingers tracing the line from cheekbone to temple. 

"Imagine the cavities in your face opening up, let the sound travel through," he said in a low but firm voice to Mr Tan. 

Mr Low praised Mr Tan for the "bright" quality of his voice but then promptly went on to correct his technique with their voices rising and falling in the humid morning air. 

Each session typically lasts about an hour. This is just one of the many times that Mr Low can be found belting it out. 

He also has a Friday night practice with about 10 friends, where they rehearse their solo performances to prepare for their annual performance at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. 

As for the TikTok account, Mr Low said his daughter is very much like his manager picking songs and directing him to get the tone and expression right. 

"I must admit that I'm not a pop singer. I am into bel canto opera or art songs. I don't know what is happening in the pop world," said Mr Low with a chuckle. 

He said he had no idea till recently what "K-pop Demon Hunters" were or why his daughter once made him sing English singer Charli XCX's "Party 4 U," but he gamely went along with it anyway.

"To me it's a fun project," said Mr Low. 

While Ms Low manages the comments, he is well aware of the attention he's receiving. 

"They call me the TikTok uncle," he said, still amused at his newfound legion of fans. 

It's a kind of fame he never actively sought, but has now come to embrace. 

“I would love to see bel canto reach more people, but the reality is it doesn’t have a big following these days,” he said. For now, he is happy to share the joy of singing and music, along with building the TikTok account with his daughter. 

"The young people are very kind," he said. "They say I make them happy."

He said that given how much negativity there can be on these social media platforms, the positive engagement he's receiving from young people is encouraging. 

"I feel heartened that through music, the good side of people flourishes. I think this whole thing shows that, yes, music or singing is in us all."