Prop star Hasan has an aria about him

Interview/Omar Hasan: Two years ago the Argentina rugby squad hosted a barbecue at Naas rugby club, an appreciation of not alone the training facilities but the welcome they had received. It was a relaxed affair with some of the players fulfilling cooking duties.

As the evening crept in, an impromptu sing song started and, as he was described at the time, "Conway, the Mayor of Naas", launched into a rendition of The Wild Rover. In response, Omar Hasan Jalil, not alone Argentina's tighthead prop but also a semi-professional opera singer, strode to the microphone and captivated his audience for 20 minutes, his repertoire taking in Argentinian folk-song and opera.

Last Tuesday Hasan walked into Dublin city centre from Argentina's Burlington Hotel base, where they are ensconced ahead of today's Test match against Ireland at Lansdowne Road, in search of tickets for the performance of Verdi's Rigoletto, one of his favourite operas. Tickets were available but he considered it would be imprudent to miss the team's video session on the same night and had to decline.

The 33-year-old beefy son of Tucuman, 1200 kilometres north of Buenos Aires, admits to the twin passions of rugby and opera but at this stage in his life he has no anxiety about the pecking order. "I have a (voice) coach Franco Iglesias in New York. I met him about a year ago. He is a good friend of Placido Domingo. It was Franco that invited me to seek out another coach to expand my repertoire.

"However, I wasn't convinced that I should stop playing rugby because I feel that I can still play at Test level. During the summer, July, I signed for Toulouse on a one-year contract with the option of another year. At the moment I'm fit and I enjoy the rugby, which is the most important thing.

"It will take two years to continue my (operatic) study and taking lessons."

Hasan has been known to take his rich baritone voice about 100 metres down the road from his apartment in Toulouse to Trevor Brennan's bar.

The Argentinian laughs when he confirms that no fee has been mentioned.

His love of music, nurtured in childhood, didn't spring from his family background.

His mother's lineage: bespoke artists, fond of painting and handicrafts. While his father, a deli/general store proprietor, boasted no obvious musical tradition in his Syrian background.

"From the time I went to school I always had a love of music, singing in the choir mainly. I tried to join a local folk group; they play traditional Argentine music but I couldn't because I didn't play the guitar well enough."

Hasan's introduction to rugby was as a nine-year-old at a local municipal club. "During the President Peron reign they took everything from my club, took it for the state. What was left was just rugby and hockey, an omni-sport club reduced to a small club."

In 1992 Hasan travelled to the Students World Cup in Italy, an experience that would inspire his subsequent wanderlust. Los Pumas eventually finished third in the tournament but not before beating England, South Africa and Taiwan at the pool stage.

Three years later he was a candidate for the Argentinian squad that travelled to the 1995 World Cup in South Africa but was overlooked. At the end of that year he decided , with several other high profile performers, it was time to fast track his rugby education by moving abroad.

He would play for Wellington in the NPC twice, most of the intervening period spent with the ACT Brumbies following a chance conversation with Argentinian-born Australian international prop Patricio Noriega. Eddie Jones (now the Wallabies coach) was newly installed at the Brumbies in 1998 having returned from Japan but in his first season the team listed alarmingly.

Despite the fact that the management were happy with Hasan, regulations laid down by the Australian rugby union could not see him stay on for a World Cup year.

After six months at Auch he moved on to Agen, where he would spend five years. The rugby highlight was a losing French championship final appearance in 2002.

During that time in Agen he toured with a group performing Henry Purcell's King Arthur. "I found that singing allowed me to express myself and that it was also good to help me with my moods. That is what makes travelling interesting. You understand the different types of folk music and how they interact with their cultures."

While Hasan admits to being an operatic novice the same cannot be said of his rugby pedigree. Today at Lansdowne Road he wins his 49th cap for Los Pumas. His career has endured disappointment (missing out on the 1995 World Cup, not playing against Ireland in the same tournament in 2003) but rugby still fires his imagination.

It's hardly a surprise to learn that a member of the Argentinian front row loves the physical imposition that propping demands. His countrymen are world-renowned for that specific aspect of the game and it is a source of pride to continue the tradition. The Argentinians have a world to describe the way they scrummage, 'Bajadita'. Hasan explains: "It is the culture. There are a lot of good coaches, who know a great deal about the scrum. We work on small details. It is that kind of thing that makes a difference. We try to push together, to be eight against one, two, three rather than one against one.

"Each man must be strong but we have to work together and I think that is the difference between our pack and the rest of the teams. We have in the culture a kind of pride for the scrum. We know that the world of rugby thinks we are so strong so we have to prove that every time."

No scrum machines for the Argentinian pack then, preferring the mano-a-mano duel, albeit with the intensity levels turned down to simmer.

His contract with Toulouse is for 12 months with the option on another year and he believes that if he can stay injury free, that may be a time to pursue his second passion. His dream is to air that baritone voice in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, cast in either Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, or Rigoletto.

"I love to sing because I feel such an energy and it is very good when people recognise it if you perform well. I get nervous as I don't yet have the experience. I have to think a lot of things to stay relaxed. Yes, the voice is okay, the body, yes. It's very hard though. Whatever will be will be, but I dream to be inside the New York Metropolitan."

His immediate ambitions are less lofty, namely the subjugation of an Ireland team that have won their last two clashes with the Pumas. Ireland's victory over South Africa impressed Hasan who's hoping that unlike the title character in Rigoletto he's not cursed, in this particular case, to suffer a third successive defeat at Irish hands.