1997

With two new discs the great Welsh bass baritone Bryn Terfel talks to Neil Evans about working with Sir Georg Solti and his exciting plans to sing Wagner. Throughout he emerges as his own boss.

"I definitely don't have the physique but women must like me" says the giant Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel preparing his first Don Giovanni on stage. "He is a psychopath who can change instantly" he says, "suave and elegant but demonic in seconds." He is not a stranger to the great seducer having recorded the role in Sir Georg Solti's last opera out this month. But his stage interpretation will be quite different. "My Giovanni will be the kind of strong personality that women like, whether it is the dark destroyer or the seducer." Terfel has now sung all three baritone roles in the opera, starting with the peasant Masetto, graduating to Giovanni's manservant Leporello. "I've tackled Giovanni from three different sides which gives you a unique perspective on how he treats everyone. The opera is set in stone but what changes are the personalities you sing with."

Very much a creature of the stage, Terfel is already thinking about the singer who will play Leporello to his Giovanni, the distinguished Belgian baritone José van Dam. "I try to dissect what he will be like as a singer and how I am going to react. But the way this special relationship between master and servant works out, together with the demands of the production you can never really put your finger on until you walk out on stage. You never know, in the catalogue aria you might have all the girls Don Giovanni is supposed to have seduced on stage. " (A nice touch although even the large stage of the Paris Opera might not be able to accommodate the kind of numbers catalogued by Leporello in his famous aria!)

If the performance on disc is anything to go by, it will be an interpretation full of character and insight. A week after the death of Sir Georg Solti, his mentor who conducted the live concert recording, Terfel is reflective. "He was superb. Any singer would make time for Solti in his calendar. He had that huge personality, the vibrancy of his life, the anecdotes of singers and conductors. His energy was immense. So many great singers have sung for him and I am lucky enough to say that I sang for him."

Indeed not only does Terfel have the distinction of saying he worked with him in his last opera disc he also sang in the maestro's last major concert, a Covent Garden gala. Not everything went swimmingly. "While we were rehearsing the fugue of Falstaff he ripped me to shreds on the first six bars of that fugue and I was terrified. But he had something positive to say and the advice he gave I will now have for the rest of my life I considered myself a sponge digesting his wisdom not necessarily to use straight away but to digest for the future." Terfel no doubt frustrated the formidable Solti by actually saying no to several offers to sing Wagner with him. "I cancelled things. He asked me to do Hans Sachs and rang me so many times saying he was going to do Die Meistersinger in Chicago. He tried to entice me by saying we would do it on alternate dates. But I knew it was too early and I said no."

It all seems a long way from Terfel's first meeting with Solti at his house in North London to rehearsal for another Mozart opera The Marriage of Figaro in which Terfel was to sing the relatively small role of Antonio. "There was to be an audition in his house and Sir Geraint Evans in Wales had arranged for me to go. I had no idea what to expect. Of course I had heard recordings and seen pictures but I wasn't ready for what was to come. This man just jumped into the room and filled the place with personality. Then I sang for him and straight away he gave me the part of Antonio."

Despite concert performances with a truly stellar cast it was never recorded. "I remember Margaret Price singing the Countess, Ferruccio Furlanetto as Figaro and a heavily pregnant Anne Sofie von Otter as Cherubino. I came up from Cardiff on the M4, my score in hand. It was my first work in London and to go into his music room with pictures of Bartok and Strauss and to see all these singers whom I'd never met was amazing."

To Terfel Solti's views on performance and interpretation seemed right and natural. "I considered him a real singer's conductor and he just loved having singers around. I always felt everything felt just right with him and then when an orchestral player turned around and said this is the highest standard we have played for a long time because of Solti's direction you heard it from all sides. It's not just the singers who are enjoying it. I would love working with Solti if I was singing 'Doh a deer a female deer!' " Solti's ambition to get Terfel to sing Wagner is hardly surprising. With his commanding bass baritone, extremely mature from a very young age, it is no wonder critics and labels have been urging him to make the plunge. But he has always taken Sir Geraint Evans's advice and stuck to the infinite variety of Mozart. Until now. He will sing Tannhauser in New York next year which he sees as a comparatively gentle Wagner warm up. But whatever happens Terfel feels that Solti's wish to see a Terfel Hans Sachs on stage may not come true for some time." I am being asked now to do Sachs but I am always declining. I saw John Tomlinson sing it, and it's a huge piece for a bass baritone and it's one I will keep away from because of the sheer length of the role." Terfel will always see the opera first before tackling a new role. "You need to really dissect the opera and pace yourself. I will often pick up the phone and ask someone like John Tomlinson or Gwynne Howell for advice on how to pace roles like these."

Terfel is clearly his own boss when it comes to pressure and what he will or won't sing. "People can write what they want to but it will not change the way I see roles. At the end of the day I decide when I am ready to sing something and nobody else. I am leader of the gang to quote Gary Glitter!"