Bryn's Song

Vanities

Take your pick: Meat Loaf, Mephistopheles, or a Labrador retriever in a tux. These are a few of the ways journalists have tried to describe Bryn Terfel. When he debuted at the Metropolitan Opera last year, the burly Welsh baritone overwhelmed the audience with his electrifying acting and elegant musicianship. Even The New York Times was impressed enough to put him on the front page—an honor reserved for the likes of Bernstein and Horowitz. "Everything happened for me in New York," Terfel says, still sounding a bit stunned. In October of this year he made his Carnegie Hall debut with Mahler's Kinderfotenlieder and returned to the Met as Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, a role he resumes this month at Chicago's Lyric Opera.

Opera's newest superstar was born and raised on a sheep farm in Wales. "We have singing contests every weekend. We sing in the church, we sing in the pub," he says of his homeland. "We sing when we're happy." Terfel broke his nose four times playing Rugby, prompting him to give up the sport and try a career in music. A knockout performance in the Cardiff Singer of the World Competition in 1989 caught the attention of maestros everywhere, propelling him to Covent Garden, a contract with Deutsche Grammophon, and America. Just 30, he has become the most sought-after baritone in the world.

In August he released a disc of British songs, called The Vagabond, and he is soon to take on the role of Falstaff—an appropriate blend of Mephistopheles and Meat Loaf—in Australia. Terfel seems to have accepted the assignment as much for a chance to have a vacation on the Great Barrier Reef with his wife and baby son as for the work. "My priorities are changing," he says. "I'm going to take deep-sea diving lessons. I think I like holidays."

JAMIE JAMES