Until just over a fortnight ago, however, he had never sung his “signature” part in his native Wales. For all the opprobrium heaped on the Welsh bass-baritone when he pulled out of the Covent Garden’s Ring Cycles last autumn - the Royal Opera House released an unusually strong statement expressing surprise and shock when he withdrew from the role of Wotan because an accident sustained by his youngest son had left him insufficient time to prepare the role to his complete satisfaction - he has won a lot of friends back home for making a point of singing in Wales.
Terfel has kept his promise that he would return to sing with Welsh National Opera when the company was housed in a state-of-the-art, modern theatre worthy of its international reputation. Two seasons ago, he sang in a new production - his first - of The Flying Dutchman at the Wales Millennium Centre, now he is lording it as Verdi’s gluttonous, ageing lothario, and it is whispered that he may be persuaded to sing his first Hans Sachs in the company’s first-ever production, two seasons hence, of Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. That is a prospect all Wagnerians will view with relish: it had been promised to Opera Australia a few years back, but Terfel, ever cautious when taking new and heavier roles into his repertoire, appears to have decided to wait until his mid-forties (he will be 43 this year) before braving this Everest of the bass-baritone repertory. If it happens - and the prospect of hearing the WNO chorus in this great choral opera is mouthwatering, too - it will be a great operatic coup for WNO, the WMC and Wales.
In the case of Falstaff, Terfel is not using WNO as a tryout for a new part, but bringing home one in which he reigns supreme. As a youngster, three years after winning the Lieder prize at the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World, he appeared as Master Ford in a revival of Peter Stein’s 1988 WNO production of Falstaff, and it is this 20-year-old but timeless staging that is revived for Terfel’s Falstaff. It is a classic, a far worthier framework for this larger-than-life Sir John than Graham Vick’s garish, poster-coloured, Tellytubbyish version for the Royal Opera. When it was new, Stein’s interpretation was dubbed - but not by me - Teutonic and po-faced. Now the humour emerges naturally out of Verdi’s astonishing, mercurial score and Arrigo Boito’s masterly text (every word audible, and relished by Terfel and his co-stars).
Lucio Fanti’s sets look traditional but unfusty, while Moidele Bickel’s costumes reflect the Shakespearian period without looking overdone. Falstaff’s bright-red wooing outfit - worn with masterly swagger by Terfel – stands out from predominant blacks and duns. Nothing is exaggerated, and Terfel gets big laughs from the smallest gestures: a raised eyebrow, or a goggle-eyed ogle at Mistress Ford’s plumptious bosom. It’s good news that the Cardiff performances have been filmed, hopefully for television broadcast and DVD release.
With Terfel as the centre of attention, the company rises to the occasion, with a fine supporting ensemble led by Janice Watson’s peachy Alice, Christopher Purves’s short, neurotic Ford, and Anne-Marie Owens’s gleefully conspira-torial Quickly. Claire Ormshaw is a charming Nannetta, and Rhys Meirion is more happily cast as Fenton than in the heavier roles he struggled to sing as a member of English National Opera. Even the cameo parts, Anthony Mee’s rubicund Dr Caius, Julian Close’s lean Pistol, Neil Jenkins’s purple-nosed Bardolph and Imelda Drumm’s attractive Meg, make their mark in this wonderfully integrated and humane staging. Carlo Rizzi and the orchestra sparkle, too. Terfel was scheduled to sing performances only in Cardiff, Birmingham and close-to-home Llandudno, but his successor, Roberto di Candia, has just withdrawn through illness, so Terfel will sing two extra performances in South-ampton and Milton Keynes. Storm the box offices now.
Source: The Times
