Intermezzo

Terfel and Keenlyside join forces at Wigmore Hall

Wigmore Hall's 2013- 2014 concert season opens on 7 September with a rare bari-summit. Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside  join forces in what is likely to be the recital of the Wigmore season.

Other highlights include a five-concert survey of Bach’s keyboard works by András Schiff. Yo-Yo Ma comes to Wigmore Hall on 29 April 2014 to give his first recital there for more than 20 years. Matthias Goerne returns to Wigmore Hall after a three-year absence on 25 September for the first of two recitals in 2013/14, opening with songs by Schubert and moving on to music by Mahler and Shostakovich in January with Leif Ove Andsnes.

More details (but not as yet a full schedule) in the press release.

Swiss Welsh Dutchman in London

Der fliegende Holländer - Oper Zürich - Royal Festival Hall, 15 December 2012

As they've done a few times before, Zurich Opera interrupted their home schedule to bring a concert version of a current show to the Royal Festival Hall - orchestra, singers and all.

This time round, it was their new production of Der fliegende Holländer.  Both London houses have tackled it recently. Neither managed, with all the costumes, curtains and furnishing items at their disposal, anything nearly as thrilling as Zurich gave us with a bare stage  - and a few top-class singers.

Die Walkure I . Oops.

Die Walküre - Royal Opera House, 26 September 2012

Is unintentional humour the most authentic element of any modern Ring production? After all, 19th century Bayreuth audiences split their corsets guffawing at the sadly literal ‘special effects’ sanctioned by Wagner himself. Brünnhilde’s entrance in Wednesday’s Die Walküre continued the tradition.

Brynfest on telly

 

Nos Sul, 15 Gorffennaf, am 8.00 o'r gloch, bydd S4C yn darlledu rhaglen ddwy awr o uchafbwyntiau gŵyl gerddorol Bryn Terfel sy'n cael ei chynnal ar y Southbank yn Llundain.

 

On Sunday, 15 July, at 8.00pm S4C will broadcast a two-hour long highlights programme from the Bryn Terfel festival held at the Southbank Centre.

 

Watch S4C live or view for up to one week here. (Overseas reader warning - unlikely to function outside Her Majesty's Realm).

Sing with Bryn

Next Saturday (7 July) offers an opportunity to get in touch with your inner Welsh rare bits and sing along with Bryn Terfel at the Royal Festival Hall. The choral classics to be covered include Men Of Harlech, Cwm Rhondda, All Through The Night and Land Of My Fathers.

The rehearsal starts at 4.30pm, and those who prefer to just watch can come and see the performance at 6pm. Either way, the event is free.

Bryn 4 Less

Best available seats for Bryn Terfel's two concerts next week at the Royal Festival Hall (4 and 5 July) are reduced to £20 (previously up to £68) with this TimeOut offer.

Bryntervention

There was a surprise in store at the end of tonight's Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

As Gustavo Dudamel returned to the stage to take yet another round of applause, he was accompanied by a statuesque figure in a horned helmet and eyepatch with a dead sheep slung around his neck.

Their mambo days now apparently behind them, the no-longer-youth orchestra encored with Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge from Das Rheingold - the sheepskin-draped figure revealed as Bryn Terfel.

I can report that he's loud enough to drown out what looked like 140 musicians. And he knows all the words. All good news of course for those of us lucky enough to have tickets for autumn's Ring cycles at Covent Garden.

Bryn Terfel's old flame

Bryn Terfel's Valhalla experience may come in handy when he carries the Olympic torch to Bangor later today.

Koch in for Terfel?

Houston, we have a rumour.

Is Bryn Terfel about to pull out of the Royal Opera's Meistersinger date in Birmingham on 11 January?

UPDATE 5.1.12 - Yes he is. It's now official - he apparently has a chest infection.

Vittoria! for Royal Opera House Tosca

Tosca - Royal Opera House, 17 July 2011

 

There was something missing from tonight's Tosca - the Maestro's vocal accompaniment. Has he bowed to public pressure and resolved to conduct in silence?

Taking a stab at Tosca - Gheorghiu, Kaufmann and Terfel

Tosca - Royal Opera House, 14 July 2011

Talk about a hot ticket. Queuing for the 67 day seats for this Tosca started the night before. But after a season short on star power, the lure of Gheorghiu, Kaufmann and Terfel (for just two shows) is hard to resist. Even if the staging is well-worn, and frankly not that exciting in the first place.

Royal Opera House summer forecast - dry with hot patches

The hot ticket for the Royal Opera House's summer season is undoubtedly the will-she/won't-she booking of Angela Gheorghiu as Tosca. Even if she does deign to grace London with her presence, it will be for two nights only, 14 and 17 July, when she is joined by Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel and immortalised on DVD. Be warned Kaufmann's recent cancellation record is beginning to resemble Gheorghiu's, though at least in his case there's been audible evidence of genuine medical issues. If you're entering the Friends booking scrum tomorrow, grab these first (the second date has more availability) or you may find nothing left.  

A respectable cast featuring Martina Serafin, Marcello Giordani and Juha Uusitalo fleshes out earlier dates in the run, and Pappano conducts all but one show.

Running alongside it is Massenet's Cendrillon, from 5 July 2011. This Laurent Pelly mezzofest is new to Covent Garden and is worth taking in for the legendary Ewa Podles alone. Joyce DiDonato, Alice Coote and token soprano Eglise Gutiérrez aren't shabby either.

Willy Decker's Peter Grimes returns on 21 June 2011. Ben Heppner is booked for the title role, though given his recent form I'd be surprised if he makes all dates. Amanda Roocroft, so impressive in the recent ENO production, is Ellen Orford. Andrew Davis conducts.

Leiser and Caurier's Madama Butterfly returns on 25 June 2011 with the serviceable Patricia Racette, James Valenti and Anthony Michaels-Moore, but more excitingly, Andris Nelsons in the pit. 

What I'm looking forward to most though is Luke Bedford's opera Seven Angels which makes its London debut in the Linbury Studio on 12 July after premiering in Birmingham on 17 June. No cast details yet.

Die Meistersinger at die Proms

Prom 2: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (concert staging) - Royal Albert Hall, 17 July 2010

I''m not sure why the BBC went for an English title seeing as this performance was sung in the original German. Perhaps they were worried people might pronounce Die Meistersinger as in "die, Mr Bond".

With no props and only a narrow strip of empty stage, the scope for acting was limited. The soloists were probably glad to sport the same democratic all-black uniform as the orchestra just inches behind them. Their heavy stage costumes would have been torture in the sweltering (as usual) Royal Albert Hall.  The revelation that without their cunning disguises nearly all the cast were the same age is testament to WNO's wig and makeup artistry in the earlier staged shows. 

Welsh National Opera's Meistersinger on the road

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - WNO at Birmingham Hippodrome, 6 July 2010 

 
The reviews for Richard Jones’s new WNO Meistersinger have been overwhelmingly positive, and rightly so. It opened in Cardiff a couple of weeks ago, but I caught it on its mini-tour to the Birmingham Hippodrome (two nights, the second this Saturday).

********   more, including photos, on next page   ********

a platter of assorted cheese - the Classical Brits from behind the trenches

Sporting a flattering pale blonde do, chatting to her table-mate Immodesty Blaize, and chugging her bodyweight in unidentified liquids, Natalie Dessay was one of the lower-profile guests at the annual cheesefest that is the Classical Brits, held on Thursday night at the Royal Albert Hall.

it's Rolando and Bryn for the Classical Brits

So the Evening Standard's stab at the Classical Brits line-up was half-right. Bryn Terfel is on the list as they predicted - but Anna Netrebko isn't. Bryn will be joined instead by Rolando Villazón. There's a slim possibility their boozing partner Angela Gheorghiu might be in the audience (she's up for an award), but she's not scheduled to perform.

Other performers include Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Rhydian (uniquely, a crossover artist who can actually sing). The rest you don't need to know about.

Anna Netrebko and Bryn Terfel for Classical Brits?

Although there's nothing as yet on the official website, the Evening Standard claims that both Anna Netrebko and Bryn Terfel will be appearing at this year's Classical Brits award ceremony, which takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on 13 May.

The Evening Standard is never wrong!

Tickets are still available, priced from £20 upwards, though whether it's worth sitting through the also-threatened Andre Rieu and Faryl Smith for a few heavily-amplified morsels is debatable.

Bryn Terfel is not so bad

Bryn Terfel - Royal Festival Hall, 11 November 2009

For marketing purposes only, cuddly Bryn Terfel is currently posing as a Bad Boy. But as CD-pimping, Gubbay-promoted, extravagantly-priced celebrity recitals go, this one was actually pretty good.

Not only did Bryn get in twice as much singing as Renee Fleming did last week - a full ten numbers - he also managed more costume changes. Method acting in a cloak for Dulcamara's Udite, udite from L'Elisir d'Amore, a hunting jacket for Kaspar's Schweig, Schweig from Der Freischütz, and more droopy scarves than a retired ballerina, he slipped easily from character to character as he ran through his list of operatic and musical villains, supplying a little introductory comment for each one. He even engineered a bit of audience participation, with a Happy Birthday sung to celebrate his 44th earlier this week.

The young (and presumably Gubbay-cheap) Sinfonia Cymru backed him energetically if not idiomatically, with Gareth Jones steering them competently enough through crowd-pleaser interludes like Danse Macabre and Night on a Bare Mountain.

But Bryn was the main attraction, and the Te Deum from Tosca was a reminder that his poisonously sinister Scarpia is probably the best around right now. A couple of devils, Gounod's from Faust and Boito's from Mefistofele, crackled with menace. The razor-accessorised Ballad of Sweeney Todd was a too-brief demonstration of a role he seems born to play. An extraordinarily poised Mackie Messer avoided cabaret caricature, though I detected a faint Welsh whiff around a few of Bryn's usually immaculate German vowels.

Wonderful textual colouring in When the Night Wind Howls from Ruddigore demonstrated a surprise affinity for Gilbert and Sullivan. A slightly less successful surprise was It Ain't Necessarily So from Porgy and Bess. The transposition from tenor to baritone wasn't a problem, but the wavering inter-continental accent, sometimes South Carolina sometimes South Kensington, suggested a little more work was necessary. A Misérable encore by The Other Schönberg was the least successful item of the night. Though Bryn gave it everything he'd got, it simply sounded second-rate after everything that had gone before.

Bryn Terfel explains the difference between opera and musical theatre

Speaking to Adam Sweeting in the Daily Telegraph, the world's greatest Sweeney Todd clarifies the all-important distinction from his opera work:

 "A musical theatre singer can stay in one city for years, so he can be at home. Singing-wise, there's no difference at all."

Bryn Terfel's underpants for hire

At least I assume they are. As Welsh National Opera open their costume archive for public hire, they tell Wales Online “The only thing we’re not planning on doing is boots. They’re not quite as easy to clean".

One of the most prized items is sure to be Bryn Terfel's costume from 1990’s Così fan tutte. The then-svelte 24 year old who has "always been very good humoured even when there are two women undressing and redressing him" made his operatic debut as Guglielmo in a toga-style costume.

More at Wales Online.

And more about sheep, leeks, opera west of Bristol - and underpants - in a new blog from occasional Intermezzo contributor HairMan - Hair Man at the Opera.