Bryn Terfel |

Bryn Terfel

Singer Bryn Terfel “is” Falstaff. Not only because this character was brilliantly interpreted by Claudio Abbado on the recently released CD. He is a real Falstaff. Just look at him: a Christian from Wales, two meters tall and weighing more than a hundred kilograms (he himself defines his size as follows: 6,3 feet and 17 stones), a fresh face, red tousled hair, a slightly crazy smile, reminiscent of a drunkard’s smile. This is exactly how Bryn Terfel is depicted on the cover of his latest disc, released by Grammophone, and on posters for performances in theaters in Vienna, London, Berlin and Chicago.

Now, at 36*, along with a small group of forty-year-olds that includes Cecilia Bartoli, Angela Georgiou and Roberto Alagna, he is considered the star of the opera. Terfel does not look like a star at all, he is more like a rugby player (“center in the third line, jersey number eight,” the singer clarifies with a smile). However, his bass-baritone repertoire is one of the most refined: from the romantic Lied to Richard Strauss, from Prokofiev to Lehar, from Mozart to Verdi.

And to think that until the age of 16 he barely spoke English. In Welsh schools, the mother tongue is taught, and English only enters the minds and ears through television programs. But Terfel’s youthful years, even in comparison with the biographies of many of his colleagues, seem to have passed in the “naif” style. He is born in a tiny village, consisting of only eight houses and a church. At dawn, he helps his father lead cows and sheep to pasture. Music enters his life in the evenings, when the inhabitants of eight houses gather to chat. At the age of five, Brin begins to sing in the choir of his native village, along with his bass father and soprano mother, a teacher at a school for disabled children. Then comes the time for local competitions, and he shows himself well done. Those who hear him convince his father to send him to London to study at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music. The great conductor George Solti hears him during a TV show and invites him to audition. Completely satisfied, Solti offers Terfel a small role in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (it was at the production of this opera that the young singer met Ferruccio Furlanetto, with whom he still has a great friendship and who infects him with a passion for sports cars and Fragolino wine).

The audience and conductors begin to appreciate Terfel more and more, and, finally, the time comes for a sensational debut: in the role of Jokanaan in Salome by Richard Strauss, at the Salzburg Festival in 1992. Since then, the most prestigious baton in the world, from Abbado to Muti, from Levine to Gardiner, invite him to sing with them in the best theaters. Despite everything, Terfel remains an atypical character. His peasant simplicity is his most striking feature. On tour, he is followed by groups of real friends-followers. At one of the last premieres at La Scala, they arrived in the amount of more or less seventy people. The lodges of La Scala were decorated with white and red banners with the image of a red Welsh lion. Terfel’s fans were like hooligans, aggressive sports fans. They instilled fear in the traditionally strict La Scala public, which decided that this was a political manifestation of the League – a party that is fighting for the separation of the North of Italy from its South (however, Terfel does not hide the adoration that he feels towards the two great football players of the past and the present: George Best and Ryan Giggs, of course, natives of Wales).

Brin eats pasta and pizza, loves Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, the pop star Tom Jones, with whom he sang a duet. The young baritone belongs to the “cross over” category of musicians, which does not distinguish between classical and light music. His dream is to organize a musical event in Wales with Luciano Pavarotti, Shirley Bassett and Tom Jones.

Among the things that Brin cannot neglect is membership in the picturesque bard club in his village. He got there for merit. In the dead of night, club members dress up in long white outfits and at dawn go to talk with menhirs, huge vertical stones left over from prehistoric civilizations.

Riccardo Lenzi (L’Espresso Magazine, 2001) Translation from Italian by Irina Sorokina.

* Bryn Terfel was born in 1965. He made his debut in Cardiff in 1990 (Guglielmo in Mozart’s “That’s What Everyone Do”). Performs on leading stages of the world.