An ex-NFL linesman who sings a mean aria

The music was always there for him. Even when Ta’u Pupu’a spent almost every waking hour lifting weights, studying game film and playing his way into the National Football League, the music was there. It had soared into his heart when he was a boy, cascading down from his brother’s bedroom, and never left. So once football decided it was done with him, spitting him out in the cruel and unforgiving way it often does, Pupu’a turned back to the music.

Embraced it, and chased it. Now, after all these years, the music is just about the only thing that concerns him. The bel canto is his Belichick, the aria his snap count. Now, the one-time defensive lineman who defied astounding odds to reach the NFL from a small Utah college is a heralded opera tenor on the verge of an equally improbable and wondrous international career — touched by some of the biggest names in the business — and he does not have much use for shoulder pads anymore. “I just want to sing,” he says. “That will make me happy.”