Playing the singing fat man

Bryn Terfel as Verdi's Falstaff

10 April 2012

What with my huge codpiece and enormous, wobbling rubber belly, and with the ladies of Windsor stripping me down to a loincloth, worn over a kind of lion-sized cat suit, all the while waddling and rolling on a steeply raked stage - it's quite a struggle.

Bryn Terfel's account of performing the role of Falstaff, the life-devouring fat knight of Verdi's final opera, conjures up obstacles and challenges way beyond the relatively straight-forward call of singing duty. Indeed, this shaggy giant of a bass baritone, son of a North Wales sheep farmer and one of the topranking singers in the world, has paid the price.

Last time he sang the role in London he damaged his back and had to have an operation - his second in six years - to repair a herniated disc. At 6ft 2in, with a burly, rugby-player's build - and nose, broken seven times playing his beloved game - he is particularly prone to such problems.

"Singing in any opera takes a huge amount out of you. Falstaff is particularly complex. Your body takes a huge strain. There's a domino effect,î he says, as if struggling with a phrase that perhaps has no direct equivalent in his native Welsh.

Excess baggage not withstanding, he plans to repeat his triumph next week in the revival of Graham Vick's 1999 Covent Garden production. In deference to Terfel, the weight of the padding has been reduced. "Graham wanted to shock, to show the great appetite of this man - for food, sex, drink. People never perceive that the opening of Falstaff is the most difficult scene ever for the bass-baritone voice. It's a hurdle already, made all the more difficult because of the raked stage and the added bulk. This time I hope it will be slightly easier."

Being laid up after surgery inevitably led to cancellations. Since he first achieved international stardom in the early 1990s, Terfel has attracted criticism for withdrawing from roles. The press, eager to hunt down frailty in an otherwise robustly successful career, dubbed him - rather effortfully - Bryn the Cancel. In 1998, he pulled out of Edinburgh when his wife had problems with her second pregnancy, and he withdrew from engagements leading up to the birth of their third son.

"I wanted to be there for the birth. And I had to be home to look after the children and take them to school.î Still convalescing from his back surgery in 2000, he was unable to perform his first major Wagner role, the Flying Dutchman, at Covent Garden. The public felt let down.

"But I couldn't walk. Couldn't stand, couldn't sit. Even that wasn't considered reason enough. I could only move my eyes." If only he knew it, his audience would hardly have been short-changed.

His eyes, saucer-like, humorously expressive, have a mesmerising repertoire, which he uses to effect on stage and in conversation, whites and irises rolling and flashing like fruits in a slot machine. Whether as Mozart's lubricious Don Giovanni, or as the devilish Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, those eyes are as memorable as the voice itself.

Resonant and gravelly, yet at times miraculously light, his sound is distinctive. When singing Falstaff he employs an ethereal falsetto so soft the audience holds its collective breath to hear him. He has been accused of succumbing to vocal roughness, of overexerting himself and treating carelessly the talent that comes to him so naturally. That line of criticism makes him impatient.

"I don't know whether I really believe that stuff about voices being ruined. Of course you have to sing what's right for you. And that's a personal matter. I know I'm a real bass baritone, not a Verdi baritone. I can't push my voice up there. The human voice comes to people's ears in a certain way. That's the wonder of it.

"Of course you might have an off night. But if the voice is working well, I love to be flexible. I'll take liberties, try that pianissimo even softer. But I don't need people to sit there scribbling about technique while I'm thumping about the stage with several tons of padding on."

When he graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1989 with the school's Gold Medal, Terfel was still naive about opera. "I'll never forget the first one I went to. I was in my first year at Guildhall. Placido [Domingo] was singing Otello at Covent Garden. I was flabbergasted by it, almost speechless. I'd grown up with a different kind of music".

That same year he was a hotly disputed runner-up to his friend and fellow baritone Dmitri Hvorostovksy, in Cardiff Singer of the Year.

Soon Terfel was starring in every major opera house the world over, from Salzburg to Sydney to the Metropolitan, New York. Yet the music with which he grew up - Brigadoon, Carousel, The Sound of Music, Oklahoma! - remains in his blood. He has often said that he thought Surrey With the Fringe on Top was written in Welsh. As a child, he sang in churches and eisteddfods.

His enthusiasm for homegrown rock bands such as Manic Street Preachers, Catatonia and Super Furry Animals merely underlines his eclectic taste, reflected in the annual festival - of rock, musicals and opera - he holds each year at Faenol, near his home in North Wales.

Indifferent to complaints that he has lost his way by agreeing to record "middle of the roadî repertoire (We'll Keep a Welcome - the Welsh Album and the like), he judges all music on its own merits. A bit of a strummer himself, he names Eric Clapton as a hero. Singing with Shirley Bassey at the 1999 Rugby World Cup Final was as high a point in his career as duetting at the Met with Cecilia Bartoli.

"Recently, I took 16 people, all opera singers, to hear Tom Jones in Atlantic City. They were like lambs, enthralled. Tom is a consummate artist. He wanted to talk to them about technique. They said things like, 'Tom, you were amazing, you sang that top A with your chest, you should have been a tenor.' They were in awe."

So, he admits, was he. Still capable of being surprised by his own reputation, he was enthralled when he met Stephen Sondheim, who came to see him as Sweeney Todd in Chicago a few weeks ago. "He even talked about writing something for me. Perhaps part of the Mabinogion - a sort of Welsh folk epic - if he can find the right bit.î Terfel also fancies trying his hand at Les Mis - "Javert is a wonderful bass-baritone roleî - and then there's Wagner, for which the opera world is panting.

He could do it anywhere tomorrow, but anywhere doesn't interest him. After a decade of operatic globetrotting, and with a young family, he has cut down on world travel.

"I was standing on the stage of the New Millennium Centre in Cardiff last week. Now I wouldn't mind singing Flying Dutchman there," the increasingly non-flying Welshman confides. Some Welsh impresario might be opening a chequebook right now.

Falstaff is at the Royal Opera House (020 7340 4000), 11-26 February.

Falstaff

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