Interview, Bryn Terfel on Dreams and Songs

It’s not terribly often that you see a line-up as diverse as Emma Thompson, Rob Brydon and Joseph Calleja joining forces on a new album, but with Bryn Terfel as the linchpin it all falls into place: the great bass-baritone’s long and varied career has encompassed musical theatre, Welsh folk-song and light classics as well as heavyweight operatic roles such as Scarpia, Hans Sachs, Wotan and Boris Godunov. Released tomorrow on Deutsche Grammophon, Dreams and Songs includes duets from Sweeney Todd and Fiddler on the Roof, a selection of comic songs and encores, and a new work by Karl Jenkins which pays tribute to the Welsh bard Hedd Wyn - killed in World War One and posthumously honoured by the National Eisteddfod in 1917.

I spoke to Sir Bryn about the inspiration he draws from the special guests on this album, the importance of tradition for him and for several of the characters he’s brought to life recently, why he’s probably hung up Hans Sachs’s last, and his own 'dreams and songs' for the future – including Bartók’s Bluebeard, a Flanders & Swann revue, and an operatic Citizen Kane…

You have a lot of famous friends joining you on this recording, including the comedian Rob Brydon - what's the story behind his appearance on the album?

I tolerate Rob, of course: the man just comes into a room and everybody laughs! When we recorded in Abbey Road he walked into a studio packed with eighty classical musicians and they all instantly smiled, and it got the day off to such a sunny start. Obviously there’s a connection in that we’re both Welsh, and in fact he plays my character in Gavin and Stacey - we all know that I’m the real Uncle Bryn! The other thing which we have in common is that we both love golf, and I came across this song called The Golfer’s Lament written by Albert Hay Malotte, who also set The Lord’s Prayer: they were both written for a radio personality and operatic and music-theatre singer called John Charles Thomas, who was also known for singing Home on the Range. He started his career at the opera-house in Brussels, and ended up singing all over the world; he appeared at Covent Garden with the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, who famously said he’d never sing with John Charles again because he was so good! Anyway, I'd been exploring some of his lighter repertoire, so I texted Rob and said ‘Will you sing this duet with me about golf?’, and he agreed, and here we are!

Another of your special guests on this album is Emma Thompson – do you feel that there’s a different vibe when you’re performing with someone who’s known for their work as an actress rather than with other opera-singers?

I would say no, because once that door to a rehearsal room is closed it’s very dedicated. It’s all about working on a project together – there are no egos in the room, and you pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get on with trying to achieve something on the stage or in the studio. Emma and I recorded ‘Do you love me?’, a short duet from one of the most iconic music-theatre pieces ever written, Fiddler on the Roof; it’s incredibly beautiful and poignant, and even when you’re performing it as an excerpt it’s so important to really tell the story. When she turned up at Abbey Road she was terribly excited because it had been announced that day that she’d accepted a damehood - the champagne should’ve been popping, but we had work to do!

The two of you previously appeared in Sweeney Todd, a piece which has become central to your repertoire – does the 'demon barber' (or indeed Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) put you in mind of any of your operatic characters?

I would describe Sweeney Todd as one of the hardest roles to perform on the stage – vocally it’s very difficult, but then you have dialogue to contend with as well, which is something that you really have to work hard on if you're not used to doing it. I remember that at the beginning of the rehearsal period with Emma I was very nervous of the fact that I had someone with me who was so involved with dialogue, so I had to pull my socks up and indeed learn from her amazing ability. Emma just puts people at ease, and that's something that you can't teach anybody: she guides you along in a very gentle yet professional way, and so the end result is something quite outstanding, The periods of doing Sweeney Todd with her in New York and in London at English National Opera were very memorable experiences - not just because of the two of us, but because of the ensemble and indeed everybody that was involved in that show. I would take on Sweeney Todd again at the drop of a hat: I absolutely adore the piece, and every time you perform it Stephen Sondheim seems to be there in the audience, with such a keen eye and keen ear to see that his work is being performed to the highest level.

I would also love to do Tevye again, but there are no plans at the moment...maybe towards the end of my career it’s something that I could put on at the Welsh Millennium Centre and have a whole run of shows there. I always imagine that Paul McCartney gets up every morning and sings Yesterday and all the wonderful hits that he’s written, and I would love to be able to sing Tevye every day for six months!

On the subject of Fiddler, I recently read an interview with Barrie Kosky where he talked about the parallels which he sees between Tevye and one of your other signature-roles, Hans Sachs – does that resonate with you at all?

Well, I’d rather sing Tevye every day than go through all the hard work that goes into Meistersinger – not least because by any yardstick Hans Sachs is the longest role ever written for the bass-baritone voice! I actually think I might have done my last Meistersinger now: the opportunities to sing the piece are few and far between, because obviously it’s a huge and very expensive undertaking for any opera-house. The beauty of this career is that you can see the work that you have to do and the operas that you have to learn for four years in advance, and Meistersinger is not in the pipeline. I do see connections between the two roles in terms of family and children growing up around them in their daily lives – Tevye of course has his five daughters, and Hans Sachs has been seeing this young girl riding a bicycle or kicking a ball for years and years, and all of a sudden she comes into his studio and says that she has romantic feelings towards him. Does he feel the same about her? Well, I think he’s more of a father-figure in a way, and he’s also a real linchpin in the community of Nuremberg – as, indeed, is Tevye in the village of Anatevka... I’m intrigued by this now, so maybe you’ll answer a question from me: what connections did Kosky see between the characters?

He touched on how they both navigate tradition in a rapidly changing world…

That’s a valid point, and tradition is something that’s also very important to me personally: we’re in the middle of the National Eisteddfod at the moment, which is the pinnacle of Welsh tradition, and for the first time it’s taking place in the Welsh Millennium Centre rather than in the pavilion where it usually is. The National Eisteddfod of course travels between South and North of Wales, so it’s now in the Bay; I opened it a couple of nights ago with a newly designed and written show about Paul Robeson's visit to the festival sixty years ago.

Speaking of Welsh traditions, the album includes a new commission from the composer Karl Jenkins, The Shepherd Poet of Passchendaele - how did that come about, and how involved were you in the composition-process?

It’s all about Hedd Wyn [aka Ellis Humphrey Evans], a famous Welsh bard who was killed in the Great War, and the fact that he will never return to his beautiful Wales. He had written his prose for the Eisteddfod and he’d actually won, but his chair is now called 'The Black Chair': he was never there to see that he’d won it and to accept the plaudits that come along with such an incredible happening.

For this album we wanted a feeling of the songs that I usually sing as encores, and that often includes new commissions; when we started planning the project I'd just sung a wonderful new work, Cantata Memoria, which was written to commemorate what happened in Aberfan. Karl Jenkins and the librettist Mererid Hopwood came together to write this magnificent piece, and therefore I was eager (as were Deutsche Grammophon and Universal) that Karl should appear on this album. The result was The Shepherd Poet, which sets a libretto by Karl's wife Carol.

In a lighter vein, you also include a favourite encore by Flanders & Swann - would you ever consider doing an entire album of their music?

I’d love to have somebody co-write a play or an evening about Flanders & Swann where I could play a part. I always like the idea of people walking away whistling a particular song at the end of a concert; a year ago I did The Hippopotamus Song at the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park, and I could see that everybody of a certain generation knew the words!

You mentioned having probably sung your final Hans Sachs - are there any other operatic or music-theatre roles which are still outstanding on your wish-list?

At the moment, I’m looking around to bring certain repertoire into my calendar – pieces like Bartók's Bluebeard’s Castle and Hindemith’s Cadillac, which is a great story. (It’s a little Sweeney Todd-esque, actually, in that it’s about a jeweller who decides to murder his customers!). But overall I’m pretty happy with what’s within my database of operatic roles; one of the actors on stage with me for the Eisteddfod at the Welsh Millennium Centre was Steffan Cennydd, who’s a regular performer at Shakespeare’s Globe, and they do these performances where they have three plays prepared and the audience picks one, so he can perform any one of them at the drop of a hat. I was impressed, but I started thinking ‘Maybe I could do that as well! I have three Mozart operas that I could bring to the table at any time…’ – that could be an interesting concept to explore. Something that I’ve always wanted is to have an opera written with me in mind, but it’s very difficult to find the right storyline: like many people, I’m a huge lover of Citizen Kane, and I also love the story of Frankenstein (though I suppose I wouldn’t be singing much – he’s very quiet, isn’t he?!)…I’d love to think that maybe one day there will be a new opera with a role that I can get really my teeth into!