Having cut his singing chops at music competitions as a boy in Wales, Terfel treats the stage like a second home – and his audience as guests who have arrived to share in his boundless good spirits.
No matter which angle you look at it from, Roy Thomson Hall – with its nearly 3,000 seats and symphony orchestra-sized stage – is an intimidating place. So it's already a feat for any solo performer to capture our attention and hold it for 90-plus minutes.
Terfel held his listeners rapt, not with larger-than-life operatic fare, but with intimate art songs and folk songs, the sort of music that lends itself more naturally to a cracking fireplace, glasses of wine and a soft easy chair.
Ranging across every conceivable mood and style, from sea shanties to 19th and 20th century art songs of England, Germany and France, to folk tunes from Wales, Ireland and Scotland, Terfel never missed a musical beat, shaping each melody with utmost care, and transforming each song's text into a story and himself into a master storyteller.
The bass-baritone was in excellent voice, too, amply filling the cavernous hall and deftly modulating his delivery from the softest pianissimo, to full-throated holler.
Like a Price is Right showcase that just won't stop giving, Terfel's particular art also includes entertainment: Telling witty anecdotes between songs, making funny faces at the audience's coughs and, in the case of one encore – "Deh, vieni, alla finestra" from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni – jumping off the stage and singing directly to female members of the audience lucky enough to be sitting along one of the aisles.
Showmanship without the art to back it up wouldn't appeal for very long. But the 42-year-old singer fulfils the artistic requirements so well (and seemingly with such ease), that he can toss aside the protective curtain of formality and really make an emotional, visceral connection with an audience.
The singer insisted on a bit of reciprocation, making the audience stand up and sing along the chorus of "Molly Malone."
Terfel had expert help at the piano in Malcolm Martineau, who was with Terfel every note of the way. The pianist even gamely sang along a few words of the second encore, Flanders and Swann's "The Gas Man Cometh."
In one of the English songs, a gorgeous setting of Tennyson's poem "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal," by Roger Quilter (1877-1953), the words go "slip into my bosom and be lost in me."
That was how everyone felt about Bryn Terfel last night.
Source: Toronto Star
