IRISH tenor Ronan Tynan is to leave New York following death threats and angry emails accusing him of anti-semitism.

The singer's fame turned to infamy in America last year after a remark about Jewish women quickly snowballed into accusations of outright racism.

Tynan has received numerous threats, one from a surgeon saying he would allow him to die on the operating table. Now life has become so difficult, he plans to move to Boston.

Last year his relationship with the New York Yankees, where he regularly sang 'God Bless America' during games, was terminated after his 'anti-semitic' remark was reported to the club.

The incident occurred on 16 October last after two Jewish women had been to look at an apartment in Tynan's building.

When the real estate agent told him the apartment had been sold, he remarked: "As long as they are not the Jewish ladies."

The singer has insisted it was said in jest and misinterpreted, but the fallout has put increasing strain on his life in the Big Apple.

On one occasion Tynan was steered away from a restaurant table by a chef in order to avoid a Jewish customer who refused to be in his company.

It has been a sharp learning curve for the double leg amputee who, in Ireland, had become a doctor and a successful paralympian before eventually switching his attentions to a lauded singing career.

Although he has rented an apartment in Boston, Tynan insists he has not turned his back on New York for good.

"It hasn't driven me out because I love this city so much, but is has saddened me," he told the New York Times.

"I've cried and I've laughed with New Yorkers, irrespective of creed or whether they're Jewish or Catholic or Protestant."

In fact, Tynan has insisted that if anyone knows the "pain of discrimination" it is him, having had to wear leg braces during his childhood due to a congenital condition. He eventually had to have the limbs amputated.

His love affair with New York and its population was passionate but short-lived, and now seems all but over.

He had become a musical fixture in the city where his heartfelt renditions of 'God Bless America' rang out at Carnegie Hall, St Patrick's Cathedral, numerous funerals – including that of Ronald Reagan – and memorials for the victims of 11 September 2001, for US troops in Iraq, and particularly at Yankee Stadium. His relationship with the team looks to be permanently at an end.

"The Yankees never reached out and they never wanted to hear the real story," he insists.

A spokeswoman for the famous sporting organisation said simply: "We wish him all the best".

Former US president George Bush Snr defended Tynan following the controversy, writing a letter to the New York Yankees in support of Tynan and insisting he was a "good man, a fair man, certainly not an anti-semite".