December 1998

Not so long ago, Bryn Terfel had barely been off his parents' sheep farm. Now he's one of the biggest opera stars around. Last August, BRIAN KELLOW journeyed to Wales to profile Terfel, who sings the title role in Jonathan Miller's new Met staging of Le Nozze di Figaro.

A string of news agents, pubs, chemist and butcher shops hugs the sidewalks of Caernarfon, a quiet town of around 12,000. On a typical day, nothing too remarkable happens here, but last August, the village suddenly sprang to life, and with good reason: Bryn Terfel, the biggest Welsh singing star to come along in years, was performing in a gala concert of opera arias. The locals, scurrying around in preparation for the big event, made you think you had landed in the middle of a Welsh version of Bye Bye Birdie.

As a feast for the eye, North Wales would be difficult to improve upon. This is rugged country, with very little development, thanks in part to high, twisting mountain roads that become hard to negotiate in the dead of winter. Now, in late summer, sunlight pours into the spectacular mountain passes and the valleys below. Stone fences wrap themselves like ribbons around the green fields. Sheep lie along the highway, and they don't hurry to get out of the way when a car comes along. In a few weeks, when the cooler weather comes, they'll head for the lowlands.

This is Bryn Terfel's world. He was born Bryn Terfel Jones a short distance from here, in Pantglas (Blue Gorge), where his parents still run the sheep farm they acquired in the early 1960s. If he's being welcomed back as a conquering hero, he doesn't seem to feel that he's ever really left. He returns to North Wales often, and he and his wife, Lesley, are currently building a house near his parents' farm.

There's a lot of importance attached to Terfel's concert, since it's going to be telecast on the Welsh channel S4C. The event -- sponsored by First Hydro Company, with assistance from the Wales Tourist Board and Welsh Development Agency, as a benefit for Welsh National Opera -- will be held at Caernarfon Castle (site of Prince Charles' investiture). A vast structure dating back to the thirteenth century, the castle dominates Caernarfon. Although the building has a magnificent exterior, virtually nothing is left of its interior, so workmen have had little trouble setting up the stage and seats for the approximately 2,000 people who have bought tickets, at 45 and 35 pounds, for the concert. At the rehearsal, Terfel bobs around in denim jacket and jeans, chatting amiably with the crew members. "It's a beautiful, beautiful castle," he says, "although it's built by an Englishman."

The concert features two other rising Welsh artists -- Rebecca Evans, a soprano who will make her Metropolitan Opera debut this season as Sophie in Werther, and tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones. Gareth Jones conducts the Welsh National Opera Orchestra. But the real drawing card is Terfel, whose spectacular rise to international fame in the past eight years has been a source of great national pride for the people of Wales. There have been many notable Welsh singers: Geraint Evans, Margaret Price, Gwyneth Jones, Stuart Burrows, to name a few. But none has captured the imagination of a wide cross section of the public in quite the way that Terfel has. Everything he does seems to generate excitement. You have to be quick to secure a ticket for his recitals and opera engagements, for they sell out almost faster than you can dial the box-office number. His debut at the Met, in 1994, in the title role of Le Nozze di Figaro, made the front page of The New York Times -- a rare occurrence in these arts-unfriendly days of journalism. He is the subject of a British-made documentary (currently showing in the U.S. on the Bravo cable network). And Terfel's CDs (he's now an exclusive artist with Deutsche Grammophon) outsell those of just about every classical singer of his generation except Cecilia Bartoli.

In Caernarfon, expectations are high. In addition to the 2,000 audience members inside the castle, several thousand more are expected to be elbowing each other for space outside in the car park, where the concert will be transmitted on giant screens, free of charge. Many of the younger locals are taking this option, and some seem a little surprised that Terfel is such a phenomenon in the U.S. "He sells out in New York?," asks a disbelieving bartender at the Celtic Royal Hotel. "You really go for all that opera stuff? We don't so much around here, you know. Most of us are just working blokes."

So, in many respects, is Bryn Terfel, and this may help explain why audiences are so powerfully drawn to him. Terfel's public is intrigued by how a thirty-three-year-old man who hardly left his family's farm before he was eighteen could take the music world by storm in such a remarkably short time. Blessed with a natural technique and a prodigious voice, Terfel in conversation is relaxed, funny and seemingly uncomplicated. If he doesn't show any obvious battle scars, it's probably because he has primarily known only one success after another.

The Welsh have long been known for the huge part music plays in the fabric of daily life, and Terfel, like many of his friends, grew up singing in church. "I'm not a heavily religious man," he says, "but where I come from, it's all farming, and the farms are scattered miles apart from each other. So religion for us was a coming together in friendship, and through that, music was a very important element. Thankfully, we had church leaders who were sympathetic to having young people come to their establishment. Therefore, pop singing with guitars and pianos became something of a draw for us. It was a very healthy Sunday morning meeting we always had. That triggered an interest in singing, and then it gradually grew into competing in different meetings, which we call the eisteddfodau." These are the famous singing festivals in which the Welsh compete from an early age, and Terfel distinguished himself in them time and again. Under the guidance of a local teacher, D.G. "Selyf" Jones, he became skilled in the Welsh art of certt dant -- singing verses on a tune already composed for the harp -- which taught him early the importance of projecting text.

One year, Geraint Evans was judging at the national eisteddfod. By this time, Terfel was a seasoned competitor and virtually impossible to beat. "That year," recalls Terfel's agent, Doreen O'Neill, "he had sung two lines of Leporello's catalogue aria, and Sir Geraint stopped him. And everyone said, 'Oh, gosh! He stopped Bryn Terfel!' And he only stopped him because after he'd sung two lines he realized Bryn was in a class of his own, and he didn't need to hear all of it." Was Evans a mentor to Terfel? "I wouldn't say that, exactly," says O'Neill. "He did think that he'd come along awfully well, though." Terfel is more succinct. "The first thing he ever said to me," he laughs, "was 'Buy a new suit, boyo. The one you're wearing is too tight.'"

By the time Terfel was eighteen, he had unusually keen insight into the interpretation of poetry, a gift that held him in good stead when he went on to university. Encouraged by his high-school music teacher, he auditioned for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. It was severe culture shock for Terfel, for whom English was a second language. "In Wales," he recalls, "all my lessons in school were in Welsh. Going to London was a drug -- every day was something new and fresh. But I was ripped apart from my own culture. It really did a lot for me to stay in college, especially the first year. The first three weeks, I desperately wanted to go home. I called home a lot. I missed simple things -- my sheep dogs, my girlfriend, my parents, my brother. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. And so many talents in Wales have done that mistake -- singers who, had they taken the leap, might have succeeded in this business. Luckily, within the six years of college it worked for me."

His years at Guildhall were spent studying fencing, acting, languages, even tap dancing, and working with two voice teachers. His first teacher at Guildhall was former oratorio singer Arthur Reckless, then in his eighties. "It was wonderful to study with him for three years and just do nothing but sing songs together. We did no technical things. We'd just sing, and he would join in. I wouldn't hear my voice even, because his voice was miles bigger than mine." He also spent much of the first two years in the Guildhall library, soaking up scores as fast as he could. "I had never encountered notes before," he says, "because unfortunately, in church, I came along when the transition was going from tonic sol-fa to the new note system. I was caught between the two of them."

With Reckless, he concentrated almost exclusively on English songs. But the day came, inevitably, when Terfel realized that Reckless had given him all he had to offer. "I wanted to learn lieder and French songs and opera," he says. "I was cruel in a way, but you have to be cruel to be kind, as they say. I took a French song to Arthur and he was concentrating so much on playing the piece that I sang it in Welsh, just gobbledygook, which was a test. And he just said, 'That's fine.' That was my cue. I remember the day I had to tell him I wouldn't be studying with him any longer. I cried so much, just waiting outside his room. There was a blind guy named John who had always had his lessons just before me, and I would bring him through the college and take him to Arthur's room and stay around before I went to my lesson. John could sense right away there was something wrong. I walked in and said, 'Arthur, it's time for me to move on.' And he knew. He agreed. So I went to Rudolf Piernay and a new era of learning how to sing."

With Piernay, Terfel worked chiefly with text and the manipulation and coloring of vowels. Piernay helped him achieve an easier sound in the upper register so that his top wasn't so wide open; his high notes became more mellow and covered. A skilled pianist and linguist, Piernay continues to work with Terfel once or twice a month. "Rudolf is almost like a [drill sergeant] -- the kind of teacher who made me sing three new songs every week," says Terfel. "If I didn't come to my lesson with them memorized, he would kick me out and tell me I was wasting his time. I was kicked out of lessons two or three times until I realized I should get my socks up. So I worked hard, getting up at six in the morning and learning three songs each week. Now I'm a quick learner, and I think that's because of Rudolf." Still, there was virtually no work done on basic technical matters such as breath support. "No need to do that," says Terfel casually. "You breathe when you're born. If there's a problem with your breathing, it has to do with stance, or how you hold your head, or nervousness."

Terfel enjoyed several early triumphs, notably winning second place (behind Dmitri Hvorostovsky) in the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. (Terfel took home the lieder prize.) Things happened fairly quickly. He made his opera debut in 1990 as Guglielmo in Cosí fan tutte at Welsh National Opera. There were small parts on several opera discs before Giuseppe Sinopoli cast him as Jochanaan on his recording of Salome, a role he repeated in Luc Bondy's acclaimed staging for the 1992 Salzburg Festival, opposite Catherine Malfitano. Suddenly Terfel found himself in the musical capital of Europe, a star in the hit production of Gérard Mortier's stormy first season as festival director. Malfitano may not have been sure about Terfel when he turned up for rehearsal wearing shorts, but he soon impressed her with his "intense energy. What makes the sparks fly between Bryn and me is the way he uses his eyes. In the Salome-Jochanaan scene, when he tried to avert his eyes and struggled not to look at me -- the way he averted them was as astonishing as it was when he was gazing straight at me. I've never experienced this kind of burning focus from any singer other than Jon Vickers. Bryn has the most amazing focus, both textually and vocally, that makes him the best dance partner in the world. He knows how to lead, and he knows when to be led."

Together, Malfitano and Terfel created a sensation, and they were reteamed at the Salzburg Festival as Donna Elvira and Leporello in Patrice Chéreau's production of Don Giovanni. "Chéreau works organically from his own physical sense of the characters," explains Malfitano. "For the catalogue aria, he had Bryn use Donna Elvira's silk veil to do a lot of quick physical changes to characterize all Don Giovanni's different women. He had to run around quite a bit, and sometimes it was quite a test of his phrasing and breath capacity. Bryn finally said if he was going to do the aria, he would have to cut down on some of the movements." "I tried my best," recalls Terfel, "but I never achieved what he wanted. Chéreau somehow is too much of a perfectionist, and I don't think he's ever happy with the work that he's done. But we had a seven-week rehearsal period, which is incredibly generous -- although most of what we did was lost in the Grosses Festspielhaus, because the space is too big. Bondy likes to work with the singers to achieve what he wants, whereas Chéreau already has his ideas all worked out. He's like a chameleon -- he became Donna Elvira and Leporello and all the others, and in a way, we'd have to copy. That was difficult for me. He's prepared to work from six in the morning to midnight. But you have to think about the singers. After seven weeks of rehearsing, they have to perform it! And if you're so tired after those seven weeks, it doesn't really help. When we did it the second year, it was better -- a feeling of not being strait-jacketed so much."

Whatever the process demanded of him, Leporello was another success, and the videotape of the performance gives a hint at what a strong presence, free of the usual stock gestures, Terfel lent to Giovanni's right-hand man. Recently, having already recorded Giovanni for Sir Georg Solti on the London label, Terfel committed his Leporello to disc as well, on the DG album with Simon Keenlyside as Giovanni. He hasn't heard it yet, and he's almost afraid to. "If it is good, it's a real wonder," he remarks. "We had five performances [at Ferrara Musica], and in between those five performances we were recording. Both Simon and I were so tired. You have to do the work, although it was not the most fantastic preparation for doing a recording. Simon and I have a good laugh about it now. Simon is quite a character. He's a great artist, and he's always drawing caricatures of me. He likes to bring in my farming background -- he'll sketch me in the middle of sheep and cows and whatever."

Terfel's singing has the breath of life. Whether in opera, concert or song recital, his astonishing range of tonal color and inflection creates twists and shadings that focus attention on the words. He has a voice like a prism; it disperses dark and light beams in ways that continually take us by surprise. This kind of immediacy seems to be one of the most difficult things for singers to achieve, and it was probably one of the reasons his Met debut in Figaro was front-page news. In his scenes opposite Dawn Upshaw's Susanna, the two set off sparks that made it the Met's most memorable Figaro revival in recent years.

Terfel's connection to text is the real thing, although he is not an intellectual performer in the way that an Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was; the joy of singing usually manages to come through even his most carefully detailed performances. Still, his principal fault may be that he sometimes goes too far. A DG recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein songs sold nicely, but some of the songs were so overdrawn they bordered on parody. "Sometimes I'm criticized for going over the limit," he says, "but I don't care. I think every song is a little scene, and you have to bring that scene to life."

Ira Siff, a prominent New York voice coach and artistic director of La Gran Scena Opera Company, says, "Singers like Bryn Terfel and Cecilia Bartoli provide great examples that you can have a major career as an expressive and idiosyncratic performer. Too often these days, American singers in particular are taught to play it safe in order to make a career. And yet, we could be in danger of a new school of generic overinterpretation rather than just generic interpretation. So many climaxes in a phrase make no phrase. You have to find the center of it." Terfel's finest recital recording to date may well be The Vagabond, an album of songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland and others that is distinguished by pure, unfussy, from-the-heart singing. It's clear that Terfel responded freely and naturally to these songs, much as John McCormack did to the classic Irish songs in his repertory.

Terfel claims to have been nonplussed by all the attention his Met debut received. "In Wales, we have papers that are really thin," he says, "so when everybody around the Metropolitan was waving around the Times piece and saying, 'Wooooooow!' -- I don't know. People said things like, 'Not since Richard Tauber had an encore in 1936 has there been this sort of blah, blah, blah.' Who cares? Those of us in the cast were having fun on the stage, and our performances were as close to 100 percent as possible, and that's what matters." The Met's old Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production of Figaro proved somewhat problematic for Terfel. "The sets were a little big, and too much in the back of the stage. Figaro should always be brought forward. And at the Metropolitan, because the house is so wide, producers have to think of things being seen. For instance, Cherubino jumping on from the side couldn't be seen from certain points. I think this new production of Jonathan Miller's, which we will do at the Met in the fall, will make sense. Act IV is always the thorn in Figaro. I haven't really been happy with any Act IV that I've done. I've never had a production that brings the contact from the house into the garden and the river, which Susanna distinctly says in her 'Deh, vieni,' about the river rushes.... There's never been one production that I thought captured that. Perhaps John Cox's in Santa Fe, because it was outside, and the birds actually came and nested in the trees and twittered along."

After Figaro got his Met career off to a blazing start, there were a few false steps. While rehearsing Leporello in the company's Don Giovanni revival that same season, he injured his back and underwent surgery for a herniated disk. He was out of commission for months. He recorded but later on decided against singing Papageno in a Met revival of Die Zauberflöte. (He was replaced by Matthias Goerne.) Wolfram in last year's Tannhäuser was a moving, deeply felt performance, although there were evident vocal troubles. But really, he hasn't been at the Met very often. Thus the new Figaro production should provide a major fix for his New York fans.

It's half an hour to concert time in Caernarfon, and people in everything from evening dress to khakis are floating into the castle, taking their seats. By all accounts, this has been one of the wettest summers on record in Wales, but a Windex-blue sky has prevailed on concert day. The car park is filling up, and all seems well. Still, not everyone in town is pleased with the night's big event. As one elderly gentleman in a suit hobbles toward the castle entrance, a mangy-looking young man rushes up from the sidelines and screams, inches from the old man's ear, "JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE WEARING A TIE DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE IMPORTANT!" I can't help laughing, wondering if this could be the beer-soaked remains of one of the boys Terfel beat at the eisteddfodau years ago, nursing an old wound.

After the orchestra plays the overture to La Forza del Destino, Terfel comes running up on the left side of the stage, looking less like an opera star than like an athlete jogging into the starting lineup. He, Rebecca Evans and Hughes Jones spin through a selection of popular arias ranging from Bellini to Bizet to Wagner. Terfel sings the first aria, Macbeth's "Pietá, rispetto, amore," and the last, the Dutchman's "Die Frist ist um." At the end of the concert, the entire audience rises to sing the Welsh National Anthem. Suddenly, I'm surrounded by wonderful voices. The Welsh don't just sing beautifully; there's a profound connection with the words. Hundreds of individual patriotic spirits can be heard in this mass sing-along. Normally, only the first verse and two choruses of the anthem are sung, but Terfel has requested that all three verses be done, since there are three soloists. Some of the Welsh people aren't used to this and stumble through the last two verses. One line, later translated for me, stands out: "O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau!" -- Oh, may the old language continue!

This refers, of course, to the Welsh language, which has made a huge resurgence in recent years. While it may not make much practical sense for the Welsh to be promoting the revival of their own language at a time when most of the world is hell-bent on mastering English, it seems to have done a great deal to promote national unity. Many Welsh people seem to have a rather complicated attitude toward the rest of Britain. It's not exactly a chip on the shoulder, but it's definitely present, asserting itself in the most casual conversations. Welsh author Jan Morris once wrote of the "yearning, profound and ineradicable, for a nation's own inviolable place in the world." The growing presence of the native tongue seems to have helped the Welsh regain their sense of that "inviolable place" to some degree.

After the concert, many in the audience proceed to a gala dinner at the Celtic Royal Hotel, where Terfel is the guest of honor. His wife, Lesley, in the seventh month of pregnancy with their second child (their son Tomos is now four), gamely ambles in. I mention to Terfel how moving I found the national anthem. He looks at me and grins. "Scratch a Welshman, and he'll sing for you."

A few days later, I meet with Terfel at the Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh, where he's staying while he sings Brahms' Requiem. Of all the cities I've ever visited, Edinburgh takes first prize for taxi drivers. Once, an American friend was directing a play at the city's Festival and happened to mention it to the driver who dropped her at her hotel; he later turned up for her opening night. My driver is no less tuned in. He asks me what I'm in town for, and I tell him I'm writing a story on Bryn Terfel. "Oh, Bryn Terfel," says the driver. "He cancels a lot, doesn't he?"

I don't have to mention this to Terfel -- he brings up the subject himself. He admits that he feels a bit of pressure to be a kind of ambassador to the world on behalf of Wales, and he sometimes finds himself forced to cancel. "In my calendar these days, there's no relaxing, because all the concerts are something very important. For instance, I had to cancel two concerts because my wife wasn't feeling well with her pregnancy. When you cancel two concerts, there are expectations that are disappointed, and concerts these days have sponsorship that is sometimes brought in by the singer himself. Perhaps I have too much of a conscience, but I always feel guilty, even when it's something as simple as laryngitis, and I can't sing. Really I shouldn't have done last night, the Brahms Requiem.

"Pressure does come -- especially now that there's a small fan club that's been started in the north of Wales. When I know they are in the audience, I am kind of obliged to sing, whatever the circumstances, and that's dangerous. A singer who's not feeling 100 percent should cancel. On the other hand, when 300 people have come a long way to listen to you, there's a little devil that's pushing behind you with a very hot iron." Does he think that he's singing too much? "No, I'm not. But this year I've been dogged with illness, and it's mostly been pharyngitis or laryngitis. When I'm ill, I'm ill, but I'm usually a bit of a horse that wants to fight through it. Now that I've been singing for longer, I know better."

Some members of Terfel's fan club have been following him since his days in the eisteddfodau. Several of them even flew to New York for his Met debut, and they're planning a trip to Australia in February, when Terfel sings his first Falstaff in Sydney. The club is presided over by Mair Roberts. "I'll never forget the day we went to his recital at Alice Tully Hall," says Roberts, "and there were people outside holding placards that said, 'PLEASE SELL ME A TICKET.' In New York, we felt quite proud Bryn was a Welshman."

Terfel never feels far from his roots. "Did you see the mountain behind my father's farm?" he asks. "My father owns that mountain. It's a wonderful area -- the simplicity of the life there. It's always a reminder, when my parents come to see me sing in America, how much I take them out of their routine. Their routine is up in the morning, do the livestock, repair walls, supper, sit down, watch TV, go to bed. And all of a sudden you're out on the streets of New York, which is a complete contrast to the nature and birds they're engulfed in. It shows me how much my life has changed, and how much I have had to adapt to my new surroundings."

Despite his assurance that he's not singing too much, there are those who think he's pushing himself in too many directions at once. "Once, I was a bit reckless," he admits. "I would play golf on performance day. Stupid things like that. Now I'm not so reckless. I found that out in Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan [in 1997-98]. It was a role I had to be careful with, onstage and offstage. It was my first real Wagner, and the second-act finale is incredibly long. Sometimes I found myself so tired I would come away from it and not even sing certain phrases just because I felt I was oversinging."

Still, he isn't afraid of Wagner, as some singers are, and he claims he will be performing more of the composer's work as soon as his schedule can accommodate it. After Terfel recorded the title role in Don Giovanni with Solti, the conductor began pressing him to perform Wagner. "I remember the day he rang me to do Sachs for his Chicago Meistersingers. He was prepared to parcel them into three days so it wouldn't be too tiring for me, but thankfully I said no. It was too early. He was very gentlemanly about it. He said, 'Okay, my boy -- thank you,' and that was it. If everything is worked out carefully, I will do more Wagner now. I envision myself performing these roles in an opera house that I know very well. I think it could be Covent Garden. It's home [Terfel and his family keep a London apartment], and I'm comfortable with that opera house."

Now that his disc of Handel arias, with Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has been such a success, he has an eye toward doing more Handel onstage. "Sir Charles is always after me to do Hercules, but it's so difficult to get hold of a score! And Amsterdam has offered me Julius Caesar, but I'm not really sure about that. It's really thought of as being sung by a mezzo, and I think that kind of change would be like a fish out of water. Fischer-Dieskau did it once, and I think the Handelians were against it."

By mid-October, Terfel is settled in at the Met, rehearsing Jonathan Miller's new Figaro production. In the Met cafeteria, colleagues run over to greet him, to tell him how happy they are to have him back. He shares a table with Dwayne Croft and Richard Leech, and everyone laughs a lot. Dawn Upshaw bumps into him in List Hall and gives him a big embrace. A Met staff member sees him in the hallway and calls out, "Hey, Bryn! Tony Bennett is giving a free performance at Tower Records today at six! Thought you'd want to know!" "I'll be there!" he calls back.

Everywhere, attention is focused on him, and the nice part is that he doesn't seek it out. Terfel seems to have mastered one of the trickiest aspects of being famous. He remains, calmly and resolutely, always himself.

On October 11, Terfel and his pianist, Malcolm Martineau, are performing a recital at Carnegie Hall. As he moves from Schubert to Wolf to Fauré to George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, it's difficult to bring to mind another singer of his generation who has gripped the audience with such confidence and conviction. The beautiful autumn afternoon is miles from anyone's thoughts. We have fully entered the world of these songs, and the doors are double-locked behind us. For his second encore, Terfel steps forward to address the audience. He tells us that his second son, Morgan, has just been born in Wales, and he dedicates Lerner and Loewe's "Little Prince" to him. The song begins, and the only other sound in the hall is of people sobbing, quietly and not so quietly, into their handkerchiefs.

Afterward, everyone pours out onto Fifty-seventh Street. It's hard to pull ourselves out of the mesmerizing two-hour concert, but soon the familiar buzz gets going. We've just seen a superb artist in his prime, and we all need to talk to one another about it.

This is a great time to be Bryn Terfel, and he is the first to admit it. Talk of Geraint Evans prompts him to say, "I think the people of that generation, in a way, were very private. I felt that with Geraint Evans when I met him -- that really he didn't give much away. That generation had a huge formality. They turned up at rehearsals in suits, whereas now we're in T-shirts and jeans. Each generation of singers has pluses and minuses. I would love to have heard Corelli live, but I wouldn't have liked to see how neurotic [I've heard] he was. We're a different generation in so many ways -- new, fresh, much more happy-go-lucky than in the past. We should be grateful for what we have -- and I am."

Teammates: At his Carnegie Hall recital debut in the fall of 1996, Bryn Terfel generously gave a solo bow to his accompanist, Malcolm Martineau. No doubt Terfel would cringe at the word "accompanist," since he considers Martineau his equal partner. "Why shouldn't he have a bow?" says Terfel. "It's a duet, isn't it?"

Martineau has been performing with Terfel ever since the baritone's days at the Guildhall School. "It was obvious, even then, that there was something special there. He was not a bass and not a baritone, and not really a bass-baritone. I played for him when he did the Cardiff Singer of the World. It was the best possible thing that could have happened to him that he didn't win Cardiff, because it would have put him in the fast lane so quickly."

Martineau claims that he and Terfel "work by doing rather than talking. A lot of time is wasted talking." Nor do they talk much when they're touring together. "Offstage, Bryn is actually fairly subdued. I always think it's the measure of a good friendship that you can be together and not talking all the time."

The pianist claims not to be surprised by the current boom in recital recordings. "It used to be that only opera singers got lieder recitals, because you had to make a name in opera first," he says. "Bryn's generation brings what they learn in lieder to the opera stage rather than the other way around."