Winter 1997

By Richard Fairman

There is a charming new addition to the Terfel's home. In a warren of former cellars Bryn Terfel's wife shows me how they have created a small bedroom and a delightful bathroom decorated with little animals for their young son. "How old is he?" I enquire. "Thirty-one," comes the answer in a booming bass-baritone from around the corner. There is laughter all round. "I think the answer you were expecting is three!" his wife adds quickly.

For the previous couple of weeks Terfel has been suffering from a throat ailment and so we are fortunate the interview is going ahead. Sometimes singers report vocal problems that cannot be detected easily, but this one definitely can. There is a strained quality to his speaking voice that sounds distinctly unhealthy. Apparently, the doctors are uncertain about the cause. Terfel explains that he has been on antibiotics for a week and has even tried a specialist chiropractor who works on the throat (an unusual form of treatment, which he obviously had doubts about fairly quickly), but nothing so far has helped. I ask if talking is a problem, but he seems to think not.

We are meeting at the end of the Prom season, the night after the Verdi Requiem which was to have been conducted by Sir Georg Solti, but instead became a memorial to him. Terfel's new recording of Don Giovanni was issued just a week or two earlier and he counts himself fortunate to have recorded a major role with Solti before it was too late. Terfel is a good raconteur, and he tells how he used to enjoy going up to Solti's North London home and seeing so many famous singers sitting quietly as lambs, as they waiting in his studio. "He always had the right tempos, I felt. But perhaps that's a but naïve of me. Maybe I just wanted to be a sponge and accept what he had to give." Even at the gala at Covent Garden in the summer, before the theater was closed for redevelopment, Terfel says Solti still had the energy and the enthusiasm to dissect the Falstaff fugue during rehearsal, talking to him for 30 minutes about the opening line, "Tutto nel mondo". "He had wanted me to sing Han Sachs for him in Chicago and tried every possible means to persuade me, even promising to divide the opera into separate acts on three different days [as Bernstein did for his recording of Tristan]. But I didn't like the fact that they were going to record it from live performances, so I said no. Once I'd made the decision, he stuck by me. He didn't bear a grudge."

Then, along came the offer of Don Giovanni, an opera Terfel must know inside out. In his short recording career he has already put down for posterity his portrayals of three of the main characters: Masetto for Östman on L'Oiseau Lyre, Leporello on Abbado's yet-to-be-issued set on DG (a "difficult" period, says Terfel, due to the pressure of trying to combine recording sessions with the live performances in Ferrara) and now -- for Solti -- the title role.

Preparations for the Don

There could hardly be a better way of getting under Don Giovanni's skin. "On this occasion I was making my preparations primarily for concert performances, so the first priority was to get the vocal side of the role sorted out. Of course, Solti was a big influence and had very decided opinions on the arias in particular. I disagreed about the duet "La ci darem la mano", because he wanted it sung very strongly, whereas I considered that Zerlina would run away if I were to be so forceful and would have preferred more quiet singing, at least in the beginning. The serenade, "Deh vieni alla finestra", was interesting, because Solti wanted a lot of rubato between the mandolin and the singer. "Fin ch'han dal vino" was incredibly fast -- so fast that I thought I might be in danger of running out of breath, and once you run out of breath in that piece, you never catch up!"

Terfel's Don Giovanni comes across with huge charisma on that set -- a tough, self-interested man and a sneering aristocrat who looks down on those he regards as his inferiors (listen to the disdain in his voice as he recognizes Don Ottavio during the unmasking at the party). But Terfel says he has no preconceptions about how the character will turn out when he plays it for the first time on stage. "The character of Don Giovanni is mostly in the recitatives, so who else is in the cast will have a significant influence on how you play Don Giovanni. If, for example, your Zerlina is small and petite, that will change your attitude. Also, for my first Don Giovanni Leporello is going to be José van Dam at the Bastille in Paris, so even now I'm trying to think what kind of man van Dam is. I met him after a recital in New York, where he seemed quite mild and soft-spoken, and I've also watched the video, where he plays Leporello to Raimondi's Don Giovanni, who is different again. I see myself as being a psychopath with van Dam, because he can play a naïve, pathetic Leporello, who feels threatened by a man of my size. People have a preconception of Don Giovanni as a slim man -- at least in Italy they do -- but because I don't have that physique, my Don Giovanni will have to lean towards being tougher. In any case I think women love tough men!"

Does Terfel's Leporello change to some degree, when he is playing the servant's role? "Yes, of course. Sometimes the Don Giovanni can be really demonic, like Ferruccio Furlanetto. Then again he might be a playful one, who is enjoying life, like Thomas Hampson. Against that kind of Giovanni, Leporello is rather a buffoon; whereas with Furlanetto it is more a case of being the master's right-hand man. I like what (Patrice) Chéreau did with the character there in Salzburg, making Leporello very much a part of Don Giovanni. That way it is clear how far each of them is dependant on the other. Leporello knows that the end is going to be, but can't make the break and get away, because something binds him to his master. Equally, Giovanni depends on Leporello, not just because he keeps the catalogue, but as a constant companion who will always be there for him if things go wrong. You see that best in the Cemetery scene."

Metropolitan début

The Mozart roles have occupied center-stage in Terfel's career and nowhere more so than in New York. I saw him hold a Met audience in the palm of his hand as Leporello, and his début there as Figaro made the front pages. With some singers a meteoric success on that scale might have gone to their heads, but Terfel is delightedly off-hand about the whole business. "I was there to sing. If they want to create an image of me as some Welshman coming from the farming valleys, that is their prerogative. I certainly didn't ask them to do that. There was one article in the New York Times, on the front page of the Arts section, that had two pages of rehearsal pictures from Figaro, and I had American singers coming up to thank me for the picture just because they were in it. They pay agents vast amounts of money for publicity out there. But I've tried to keep away from all that. What was important to me was to enjoy my début at the Met. We had great fun backstage there, sharing pizzas together at the end of Act 2 of every Figaro. I had Tom Jones blasting away in my dressing room and the dressers would come in and join in a chorus of "It's not unusual"."

Figaro has been his calling-card at many of the world's top opera houses, not only the Met, but also Santa Fe, Hamburg, Vienna, Munich, Paris, Lisbon, Milan and Covent Garden. There have been no misjudgments, as Terfel has not rushed into major roles that he might regret. He explains how carefully he considers some offers, such as Abbado's recent proposal of Simon Boccanegra, which he regretfully declined. "I studied it, went through it with one of his coaches, but now I've leant away from it, because I didn't feel it was right. Then, when you say no, they say "Why don't you sing Fiesco then?" And I said "No, I think it's a bass role." So then "Why don't you sing Paolo?" Ultimately it's the singer's responsibility to work out his own vocal scope."

What is right for him then? He says one opera he wants to do is Die Zauberflöte, but that has not worked out yet ("I've just pulled out of a production I was meant to do at the Met, so that I can spend more time at home"). If not Boccanegra, what Verdi suits him? He says Falstaff, definitely, and Ford ("Although people may say I'm too young for Falstaff, I think he has to be sung by a young voice"). Perhaps Terfel's solo operatic discs point in the right direction. But no -- he is certain they do not. The recently released Handel Arias disc was one he obviously enjoyed making, thanks to the bracing pleasure of working with Sir Charles Mackerras, but he has no intention of strutting about in a Roman toga as Julius Caesar. His opera recital disc -- a big success with critics and record-buyers -- does not seem to arouse any affection in the singer himself. "Record companies need you to do aria discs, but I don't like showcases. That disc made me sing repertoire which I shouldn't even think of doing, like Macbeth, and perhaps the Borodin (Prince Igor)."

His recording plans give a firmer picture of the future. The Rake's Progress is completed, following concert performances at the Barbican in London conducted by Gardiner, as is Sharpless in Madama Butterfly after performances in Japan under Ozawa. The title role in Falstaff with Abbado is definitely coming up. Then he has been asked to consider Korngold's Die tote Stadt, which he is looking at, and Gianni Schicchi. One role which he describes as "a thorn in his side" is Mandryka in Arabella. He cancelled the Covent Garden revival in 1996 and a projected recording with Sinopoli has not fared any better. "We were meant to record it for about four years, but first Studer got ill, then I got ill, then Studer got pregnant. Now it's been put on the shelf, perhaps for another conductor to take over. But I've loved the role ever since I heard George London's recording of it with Solti." He even admits to an aspiration to take more Britten into his repertoire, with Billy Budd in his sights.

Wagnerian promise

But where is Wagner in all this? "So far I've done Donner [Das Rheingold] in Chicago -- a small step, but an important one, because I could experience the textures in the orchestra and listen to James Morris, who was singing Wotan. I had expected the next step to be Act 3 of Die Walküre at this year's Edinburgh Festival and was desperately disappointed that I had to cancel it because of this throat problem. Now I shall be moving on to Wolfram in the Met's Tannhäuser this autumn. After that I see the Dutchman and Hans Sachs as the most imminent Wager roles for me. We had planned to open the Cardiff Bay Opera House with Die Meistersinger in 2001, but obviously that isn't going to happen now. Still, I have set a month aside next year to start looking at it. I went to see the revival of Die Meistersinger at Covent Garden this summer -- the last performance before the closure -- and was amazed at how often Sachs keeps coming back in to the stage. Thank of the sheer amount of singing! But the music is of a kind that you could sing lyrically in the right opera house. Christian Thielemann is definitely going to do all the Wagners and perhaps that's my opportunity. He has just signed a contract with DG and I'm associated with DG as well, so hopefully I might be able to fit into his plans."

The missing figure is Wotan. It is probably a question Terfel has heard countless times before, but many people do say he was born to sing Wotan. No hint of impatience crosses his face: "I've read in any number of opera magazines and newspaper articles that I should be singing Wotan at this present time, but if I'm not confident enough to do it myself, why should I listen to someone else?" I suggest helpfully that if he starts singing Wotan, there is also a danger opera-house managers will not want him for anything else and so his career will have peaked early. The reply is a bolt from the blue. "People don't know how long I'm going to be in this profession," he answers casually. There is a moment of silence while I take in the import of his reply. "What exactly do you mean by that?" I ask tentatively. "Maybe I have set a gate for myself. I can't see myself in this profession for very long. I have other interests, so what I want to do I must do now." The answer is at once clear and -- teasingly -- unspecific. Whatever else Terfel means, however, one thing is apparent: the Norns are already weaving their thread and Terfel's days as ruler of Valhalla cannot be expected to last forever.