What the 29-year-old Welshman does have is a gorgeous, unforced voice that can produce anything from a feral growl to a shimmering, baby’s-breath pianissimo, and an infectious stage presence. He moves with an athlete’s grace and energy. Trade the Manchester United soccer-team cap he wears offstage for a Dallas football helmet and he’d look right at home on the Cowboys’ front line. Audiences respond not just to his musicianship, but to his naturalness and his sexiness. Terfel’s Figaro, the young valet hellbent on keeping his boss from seducing his fiancee, Susanna, is wild and sweet. ““I play him as a bear,’’ says Terfel. ““Figaro and Susanna don’t have much time to show affection. So in those few moments, I really do it. I wrap my legs around her like a bear.’’ Soprano Dawn Upshaw, who was Susanna, says Terfel plays Figaro ““as if he’d lived with him for years. And he was so teddy-bear-like, it was easy to be affectionate with him.’’ Last week Terfel was supposed to star as Leporello in the Met’s ““Don Giovanni’’ but had to cancel opening night after he hurt his back in rehearsal. He is scheduled to appear in the role this week. Before the injury he gave a sold-out recital at Lincoln Center. His pianist: James Levine, no less, artistic director of the Met. Mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, who did ““Don Giovanni’’ with Terfel in Salzburg last summer, sums him up: ““Fantastico!''
You can’t buy the kind of word-of-mouth Terfel has generated in the opera underground since 1989 when, not long out of conservatory, he entered the Singer of the World competition in Cardiff – and lost to Siberian-born baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. ““When he did [Handel’s] “Ombra mai fu,’ I melted in my chair. And he followed it with an incredible Macbeth,’’ says Terfel, who came in second but caught the ear of some major conductors. Faster than you can say Dmitri Hvorostovsky, he was getting job offers. And turning them down. When Covent Garden asked him to debut as Figaro, he said no. Instead, he took the relatively minor role of Masetto in ““Don Giovanni.’’ ““I wanted to do small parts at first, getting to know the operas. I feel better prepared for everything.''
Terfel is still saying no, and not just because he’s booked until 1998. He’s not yet comfortable, for instance, with some of the heavy Verdi repertoire. He turned down ““Il Trovatore’’ because ““other people were doing it better.’’ (Pause.) ““I had my wisdom teeth out instead.’’ (Guffaw.) Terfel is a good guffawer, which is useful in the cutthroat business he’s entered. ““I think my head is screwed properly onto my shoulders. Unless I’m singing John the Baptist.’’ Another guffaw, as he flips up the brim on his baseball cap for the umpteenth time. Terfel is like an overgrown kid in perpetual motion even while he’s sitting, rocking a coffee table back and forth with his size-13 sneakers. Then he gets serious. ““The way I see it is this. You’ve got to have what it takes. This pressure could hurt a young singer. You must be able to ride it.’’ Terfel arrived at that philosophy when he was still on the audition circuit. ““I said to myself, I can’t be nervous. It will only make my performance worse. I’m going to sing the hell out of this song. I’m going to enjoy it and the audience is, too.’’ Listen to his new ““Figaro’’ recording, or his sublime new Schubert disc, ““An Die Musik’’ (Deutsche Grammophon), and you’ll know exactly what he means.
That blend of confidence and humility was probably bred in the bone. Terfel was raised on a cattle and sheep farm in Pantglas, a tiny town in north Wales. (““You couldn’t ask for a better upbringing,’’ he says.) Like roughly 2.7 million of the 2.8 million people who live in Wales, he grew up singing. It’s a country where hymn singing is almost as likely to go on at a soccer game as in church. ““I wasn’t very good,’’ he insists. ““I wasn’t a boy soprano, I was a scream.’’ When he was 11 his voice broke, and soon after, he was winning eisteddfods, the popular Welsh singing contests. (The ““very keen sportsman’’ liked to spend his prize money on athletic equipment.) After high school he went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (he’d never been to London until his Guildhall audition). Among his courses was tap dancing. ““I always stood in the back. I was dreadful. I couldn’t get tap shoes big enough. I just put nails in my regular shoes, which probably wasn’t a very good idea.’’ He also found Rudolf Piernay, the voice teacher with whom he still studies. ““I don’t go to him just to brush up,’’ he says in horror. ““I go back for lessons.''
At home, Terfel is already an established hero. ““The Welsh treat their singers very well,’’ he says. He has his own TV music program, which he films whenever he can. One radio show keeps a copy of his schedule: ““Every time I go to another country, they ring me up and say, “Hello, Bryn?’ And we chat.’’ His wife, Lesley, and baby, Thomas, travel with him. Because a singer’s life is so complicated, they’re considering adding a nanny, but not yet. Paternity clearly agrees with Terfel. ““I’m very comfortable with my kid,’’ he beams, adding that Welsh is the only language Thomas will know until he’s 5 or 6. During ““Figaro’’ rehearsals, he and Dawn Upshaw exchanged pictures of their babies. ““I think in a way, that secured the bond between us,’’ she says. ““We were going through the same nightly ordeals, coming in with drool on our clothes.’’ Terfel can’t get home to Pantglas often enough, so sometimes it comes to him. Last month 74 people from Wales traveled to New York to hear their native son. He had trouble finding the right restaurant to take them all to dinner. One place offered him a menu ““with caviar and pork in cheese and lemon sauce. It’s not their style, especially the 50 percent that are farmers.’’ They wound up, very happily, at a burger-and-chicken place ““like a “Cheers’ bar.''
Though Terfel says that New York City is ““a bit overwhelming,’’ he looks completely at ease ambling up Broadway after a rehearsal, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket and chomping on Cheez-Its. ““All this publicity,’’ he says. ““I didn’t go searching for it. Maybe when I come back here again, it will be over. But it’s been nice.’’ There’s about as much chance of the publicity ending as there is of Terfel becoming the tenor he wishes he were. ““I went to “Tosca’ for the first time here with Pavarotti. He was brilliant. And what lovely arias,’’ he says dreamily. ““Perhaps I’ll come back as a tenor.’’ That’s enough to make any opera fan believe in reincarnation.
