According to the Express and Star just 2,000 tickets had been sold for the 20,000-person Molineux Stadium. The concert will be offered again next year, but promoter John Warwick, of the Reduced Opera Company, told the paper the postponement could cost him Ô£250,000.

"We are definitely postponing the concert," he said. "It is a huge disappointment for us. It would have been a fantastic concert and a great coup for a star like Carreras to appear in the West Midlands. I just don't understand it. I sat there watching Katherine Jenkins clean up at the Brit Awards, and she was fantastic, but people in the West Midlands just don't seem interested in it. It is a crying shame."

Welsh soprano Jenkins' album Living a Dreamrecently won the Classical Brit Awards' Album of the year, the second time an album of hers won top prize.