[ ClassicalX ] Bryn Terfel

The 'bad boy' of opera loves a round of golf and a nice glass of wine. As David Whetstone finds, Bryn Terfel isn't as bad as he is being painted.

He's one of the big men of opera – in voice, in stature, in reputation. But now Bryn Terfel is being marketed as the ‘bad boy’ of opera as he prepares for a national tour which will bring him to the North East for the very first time.

It’s hard to believe really, but the Welshman swears he has never set foot on Tyneside either professionally or off duty.

“I’ve never been up there to sing in any hall and so far I’ve missed out on The Sage Gateshead, although I’d love to go and see it,” he says.

“But I’ve got to concentrate on where I will be performing and, having just been to New Zealand, I know the importance of the town halls there. They’ve got some wonderful acoustics – they’re like the bathrooms of the concert world.”

Newcastle City Hall is the concert ‘bathroom’ he is heading for next month in a rousing finale to a tour organised by Universal Music and opera impresario Roland Gubbay.

Both specialise in bringing classical music to the masses and the tour comes on the back of a new CD, Bryn’s Bad Boys, on which he sings arias by the likes of Scarpia (the lustful police chief in Tosca), Méphistofélès (the demon on Faust), Iago (the scheming soldier in Otello) and Sporting Life (the drug dealer in Porgy and Bess).

Bryn Terfel is one of the biggest male stars of world opera but there are other things in his life, as I am quick to realise.
“I’m hoping to get a round of golf while I’m up there,” he says. “The conductor, Gareth Jones, is a good golfer so we are planning to take a trip up to Slaley Hall and play there.”

Then there’s the small matter of wine. A recent BBC Radio 4 programme called Bryn Terfel Masters Wine revealed the singer’s secret desire to become a sommelier, or professional wine expert.

He met some of the leading lights in the business and showed not just his passion for a good vintage but quite a deep knowledge.

“I’ve always had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about opera and wine,” he says, warming once again to a favourite theme.

“Opening a wine shop is a little dream of mine. There are so many things that connect opera and wine, I find.

“The whole process of making wine is a scene in itself – the detailed and varied work that is involved. It totally rings bells with what I do for a living.”

In the programme he explained how he loved to relax after a performance with a glass of wine – a deep red following one of the meatier roles in his repertoire and a crisp or sparkling white after something lighter.

He talks about Australian expert Vanya Cullen, who runs Cullen Wines and who he met on the programme, with enormous admiration.

“It’s a passion that’s very special but she is also very passionate about music,” he says. “She has to take into consideration what the soil and the weather are like, but she is also likely to play a bit of Dvorak to help the vines.”

So how did a farmer’s son from Pant Glas, North Wales, develop a palate for wine? The answer, inevitably, is wrapped up in music.

As his star rose in the world of opera, so he would find himself performing for some of the greatest wielders of the baton – men of the standing of Claudio Abbado, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic before Sir Simon Rattle.
Invariably, these musical superstars would be treated after a concert to a wonderful meal which catered to their every taste.

And perhaps it goes without saying that their tastes tended to be refined and a little expensive.

“When I was a young singer I didn’t know much about wine, but I used to study the wine etiquette and I even used to collect the labels off the bottle so I could recognise it again,” recalls Bryn.

“I started to keep a record of the opera I had just performed in and the wine afterwards and give it marks out of 10.”

Bryn Terfel has been a familiar figure on television since taking part in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1989, coming second in the overall contest, but winning the Lieder Prize.

He made his operatic debut the following year as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte at the Welsh National Opera, which is clearly close to his heart.

I am speaking to him shortly after he has made a trip to New York to publicise the company’s forthcoming production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in which he is to sing the challenging role of Hans Sachs (Meistersinger).

“It’s a huge undertaking for the company, hence the reason I flew out there for a fundraiser,” he says. “They’ve got a new American branch of their Friends organisation, but they really have to be right on the ball with the funding to do something like this because it could break the back of a company.”

If Bryn Terfel doesn’t get the Welsh pouring through the doors in Cardiff, nothing will. It marks the next phase of his career, he says, having left the lighter roles of Mozart behind him.

“The knees won’t take it any more,” he tells me, which will confuse anyone who thinks opera is just about singing.

There is a new generation of young performers coming along, he says, and he is happy to leave the likes of Figaro – for which he has received huge acclaim – to those with niftier joints.

The seven-city tour of operatic bad guys, which begins in Cardiff on November 9, marks an interlude in the operatic schedule and he says he is looking forward to it.

“We’ll have a great orchestra, the Sinfonia Cymru, which is mostly great players under the age of 35, and a local choir.”
It brings him to a stage well known to home-grown opera star Sir Thomas Allen, who sang the title role in Don Giovanni when Bryn Terfel made his Covent Garden debut in 1992 as Masetto.

Bryn and his wife, Lesley, live near Caernarfon and have sons aged eight, 10 and 15.

“It’s not the coolest thing in the world to have a dad who is an opera singer,” he says, but adds that the boys are showing signs of following in his musical footsteps.

Bryn Terfel’s Bad Boys concert is at Newcastle City Hall on November 25, coinciding with the release of the new CD on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Source: The Journal