Bryn on the Bad

SOMEHOW, it doesn’t surprise you to learn that the brooding star of song, Bryn Terfel, has opted to bring the Bad Boys of opera with him on a stage tour. Welshman Terfel can make your head spin with the international demands on his time, but he admits to revelling in being able to perform his most villainous stage arias at Newcastle’s City Hall later this month.

“Actually, I don’t think they’re all construed as very bad guys. Some of them are relatively calm, but I think the concept came from a singer called George London, who I put on a pedestal. He had an album called Gods And Demons which I had on an old format LP in my student digs in Golders Green while I was studying for five years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

“I listened to this guy quite often and I’ve always wanted to reciprocate that idea because it brings in music theatre as well, which I’ve done a few times. There’s Javier’s wonderful song from Les Miserables and I’m a huge fan of Sweeney Todd. I don’t think I’ll talk to Johnny Depp any more because I was waiting for the phone call to play the film role. But it was my first contemporary role on an opera stage and it was a unique feeling to have Stephen Sondheim coming into my dressing room to talk about the goods, the bads and the words I’d forgotten, because his memory is like a computer,” says 43-year-old Terfel.

He put the idea of portraying Bad Boys like Scarpia (from Tosca), Mephistofeles (Faust), Iago (Othello) and Sporting Life (Porgy and Bess) to producers and admits it was a huge task to pick and choose the songs. The other result was a new album which was released on Deutsche Grammophon this week.

“I’ve always wanted to sing in different styles because I was brought up in Wales with the miscellaneous concert regime where you sing with male voice choirs.

People want to hear the music they can react to and songs your mother sang to you. I wouldn’t have done many of these Bad Boys songs at the beginning of my career because I had a student repertoire. Now I think that students need to learn a repertoire of songs which will hold them in good stead for the future,”

Terfel says.

Does he feel he could tackle just about any baritone role in opera now?

“I did actually have to learn some new arias as well, such as the tenor song by Sporting Life in Porgy and Bess. I heard the song for the first time at the Cardiff Singer Of The World by Damon Evans from the US and I thought ‘wow, what a brilliant aria’ and that went straight into my Bad Boy list,” Terfel replies.

HE confesses that some of his touring is linked to his love of sport. Hence his opening night for the Bad Boys tour is at Cardiff when Wales’ Rugby Union team are playing New Zealand. Last year he timed US concerts so that he could watch Joe Calzaghe fight and also take in the Ryder Cup.

“This is my first time in Newcastle because I’ve often tried to sing in one of your wonderful halls and always missed out on The Sage, but this time I’m at the City Hall. It’s a good introduction for me to your neck of the woods,” says the singer who now knows up to five years in advance if he’s being invited to sing at world famous venues like New York’s Carnegie Hall.

“That reminds me of the story about the man who said ‘Do you know the way to Carnegie Hall?’ and was told ‘Practise, practise, practise’,” he jokes.

Terfel says his current “ball and chain” opera role is Hans Sachs for the six-and-half hour opera Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg by Wagner, which will be performed at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, in June.

“It’s like pulling teeth learning Wagner and something you have to be very regimental about and I’ve got lots to learn before the production starts next summer.

When you start learning an opera you absolutely hate it, but when you’ve learned it and all the words are secure in your mind and your psyche and then your feelings turn to love. I’ve listened to at least 12 different recordings. Next I’ll lock myself in my music room with the Snowdonian mountains behind me as a good inspiration. Only last week we went to the summit doing a charity walk and I got the feeling that I’m on the right track,” says Terfel, who lives with wife Lesley and his three children near Caernarfon.

He is a big fan of X Factor and praised Connie Fisher’s recent appearance in the Cardiff leg of The Sound Of Music UK tour. “Every seat sold for the run and next we’ll be getting a touring version of Les Mis with the likes of Gareth Gates in it.

“If we find talent out of these competitions isn’t that to our benefit? There is a bandwagon involved in selling 12,000 seats for an arena tour. We could never do that. If I had been involved as a sheep farmer’s son at 18 years old, you could have had a good angle. The sheep farmer’s son singing Tom Jones’ Green Green Grass Of Home,”

he jokes.

Does he sing when watching his beloved Manchester United?

“Well I took my ten-year-old middle son, Morgan, to Rome for the Champions’ League Final and he picked up a couple of songs. There was one ‘he plays on the left, he plays on the right. Christian Ronaldo makes Messi look shite’. He was singing that in the taxi coming home and on the airplane,” laughs Terfel.

■ Bryn Terfel – Bad Boys, Newcastle City Hall, November 25. Tickets: £35- £45-£55. Box Office: 0191-