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.


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