Word: terfel
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Dates: during 1994-1994
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Whatever the alchemy that makes a star of a fine singer, Terfel has it. All his Metropolitan Opera performances this fall in the title role of The Marriage of Figaro and as Leporello in Don Giovanni "went clean" -- theatrical slang for sold out -- before the first curtain went up, and there were scuffles in the line for tickets to his New York City lieder recital last month. Onstage his presence is riveting. Both Figaro and Leporello are servants, but there is no trace of the oaf or the buffoon in Terfel's portrayals. In both parts he can be physically...
...When Terfel emerged five years later, newly married to his childhood sweetheart and with a contract from the Welsh National Opera, he bought a house in Cardiff, thinking that he and his wife Lesley would spend their life there. But the house is already sold, and the Terfels now live in London -- that is, when they are not on the road. They always travel together, joined as of four months ago by baby Tomos...
...Terfel likes to say that as a singer "you are in the lap of the gods." He believes they gave him a perfect upbringing, in the shelter of a small North Wales village near Snowdonia. His family are farmers; his first language is Welsh. Not for nothing is Wales called "the land of song." There, singing is not a self-conscious act but a community expression. Eisteddfods, or local song contests, flourish even in hamlets. Young Bryn won a long string of them and used the modest prize money to buy soccer shoes...
Bryn was a busy kid. "I was quite a little taxi for him," recalls his mother Nesta Jones. (Terfel is Bryn's middle name; another singer uses the name Bryn Jones.) What he learned at the eisteddfods was stage presence: "When I went to college I was streets ahead of others because I was used to facing the public." At London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he was awarded a scholarship. It was then, Nesta Jones says, "that we thought he had something special...
Directors love working with Terfel. Luc Bondy, who directed him as Jochanaan in an acclaimed Salome in Salzburg two years ago, recalls, "Our first meeting was funny. He was so young and so big. I thought, 'This big, big baby could be my son."' Bondy learned that Terfel "is not a guy who is pretentious and insists on his own way." On Terfel's wish list are parts like Falstaff, Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress and Escamillo in Carmen. His first Wagner, probably at the Met, will be the comparatively light role of Wolfram in Tannhauser, with...