Bryn terfel biography samples

I fear writing this much about the Met’s still-unfolding Ring cycle may be having a bad effect on my brain, but I went to Die Walküre on Saturday and here’s what happened. The production is still simple-minded, Bryn Terfel is still the best, Fabio Luisi is still Fabio Luisi, Jonas Kaufmann canceled, and I continue to learn what makes Wagner special by seeing what has been drained out of this production.

Wagner, Die Walküre. Metropolitan Opera Ring Cycle 2, 4/28/2012. Production by Robert Lepage, conducted by Fabio Luisi with Bryn Terfel (Wotan), Katarina Dalayman (Brünnhilde), Frank van Aken (Siegmund), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde), Stephanie Blythe (Fricka), Hans-Peter König (Hunding).

At MIT last week, Peter Gelb said that Robert Lepage intended to “tell the story that Wagner wrote” in his Ring. But what story is that? Lepage seemed to describe it as Icelandic myth, but the sources are actually much more diverse than that. Das Rheingold is largely Icelandic, but much of Die Walküre is based on the Völsungsaga, which is Nordic or Central European, and is a source for the Nibelungenlied, the Germanic source for Götterdämmerung. And that’s a vast simplification.

You might say that doesn’t matter: what matters is what Wagner put together. But this collage of myths, and the instability and “live-ness” of oral transmission is imprinted upon the Ring. Again and again, characters tell us, and themselves, and each other, stories–Loge and Wotan in Rheingold, Wotan in Walküre, and Siegfried in Götterdämmerung are a few of the most prominent examples. These long scenes are often considered dramatic dead zones, but they’re very very important. We learn important new information in each one, the listening characters make decisions, and the characters learn things themselves as they narrate (Wotan realizes why he has to let Siegmund die or Siegfried gradually regaining his memory, for example). The Ring’s story is not linear or

Since his stage debut with Welsh National Opera in 1990, singing Guglielmo in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, he quickly went on to build up his operatic repertoire. His first international offer came from Salzburg, and since then he has appeared in all the major opera houses of the world, with music as diverse as Mozart and Wagner, Puccini and Stravinsky, Verdi and Britten.

Bryn Terfel's signature roles include Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and the title role in Verdi's Falstaff. In 2004 he made his debut as Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to rave reviews from the music press, including "In his first Wotan, Bryn Terfel fulfils his destiny as an operatic singer" (Rupert Christiansen, Daily Telegraph).

He also excels in the more intimate setting of the recital room and has more than fulfilled the promise shown when he won the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World Lieder prize. He sings the full range from German Lieder by Schubert and Schumann to English songs by Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Finzi and Ireland, and has recorded several award-winning CDs with this repertoire.

And that's not all. Bryn Terfel achieves seemingly effortlessly what many other classical artists attempt with less success - the 'crossover' album. He has recorded two best-selling albums of show songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe.

Terfel also performs and records his beloved Welsh folk songs - not so much a crossover project as a return to his singing roots.

Bryn Terfel was born near Caernarfon in rural North Wales in 1965, and was singing onstage at Eisteddfodau from the age of four. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, his first big break coming when he won the major Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1988. The now-famous 'battle of the baritones' with Dmitri Hvorostovsky followed at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition the following year.

Although Bryn Terfel performs

There are certain operas such as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Handel’s Radamisto where one will forgive the odd piece of clunky or prosaic direction if the musical credentials underpinning the evening are strong. There are other pieces, however, such as Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Shostakovich’s The Nose where, if the staging is not slick from start to finish, the evening is almost wholly undermined. There is actually something unfair about this, because it is not that musically these pieces are any easier to perform. It is simply that some operas demand delivery on all fronts in order to be successful, and Verdi’s final opera Falstaff is certainly one of them.  

The work premiered in 1893 as the composer was approaching his eightieth birthday, and the fact it was one of only two comedies he ever wrote (the other being the ill-fated Un giorno di regno) at least hints at the difficulties involved in creating them. It almost requires more skill to write a piece that maintains a cracking pace throughout, and hence sees recitative and aria virtually merge into one, than it does to compose the most soulful, languid or popular operatic tunes. For example, when Verdi tricks us in Act III into thinking we are about to hear a full lovers’ duet, only for this to be interrupted before taking flight, he reveals both his wit and his musical talents in making the joke work.

Based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, the plot sees Sir John Falstaff attempt to seduce Alice Ford and Meg Page when he runs short of money. The women discover that he is chasing them both and decide to play along to teach him a lesson. At the same time, Meg’s husband Ford lures Falstaff into his own trap while Ford’s daughter Nannetta wishes t