Wales’ musical knight Bryn Terfel tells me he is always looking for another feather for his cap and there will be plenty to add in 2025. Launching a new singing competition with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama; working as a coach on Yr Llais, S4C’s Welsh language version of The Voice, being a grandfather for the first time and there’s a small matter of his 60th birthday.
No wonder the North Wales warbler, as he modestly describes himself, says that he sometimes feels like pinching himself when looking back at the amazing things he has experienced since representing Wales in BBC Cardiff Singer of the World in 1989 while completing his studies at the Guildhall in London and then making his professional debut with Welsh National Opera.
Chatting to Bryn before he takes to the stage of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, to sing one of the many roles in which he has excelled, the arch villain Scarpia in Puccini’s opera Tosca, the conversation resembles a vocal roller coaster, sweeping along from those “pinch yourself” experiences over the past 35 years, performances and concerts on the near horizon, to 2025 plans.
Hannah, Bryn, Alffi and Lili
Natalya and Bryn in 2004
Bryn is a father of five, three now grown-up boys from his first marriage to Lesley, Tomos, Deio and Morgan, and now a son and daughter with his wife Hannah Stone.
“After 25 years of my life my marriage fell by the wayside and life started again with a new partner, my wife Hannah. I have two young kids Lili aged seven and Alfie aged four. My eldest boy Tomos works for the First Minister in Cardiff and Deio is a primary school teacher in Barry. Hannah and I live in Penarth and the older boys have fully embraced life in Penarth and that is the beauty of life.”
The young Terfel moved to London in 1984 to study at the Guildhall School of Music, where he won both the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Prize and the Gold Medal, when he graduated. Terfel was chosen as his professional name as there was already the South Wales baritone Delme Bryn-Jones. Terfel was one of his names, rather than plucked from the air. There is a village in his native Snowdonia called Llandervel. This became Terfel in his name.
In 1989 Terfel competed in the Cardiff BBC Singer of the World Competition, which was won that year the late great Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Bryn won the Leider Prize, which was created that year, and subsequently became a separate competition, as the Song Prize. His professional debut came with Welsh National Opera singing Guglielmo in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, but he was already working in a range of places and types of work getting his career off the ground. He had also started a family, marrying his first wife Lesley in 1987. “The first 12 years I had to concentrate on building my career so I had a lot of time away from my family then. That involved a lot of travelling and rehearsing work. There were lots of debuts and travelling. Those years include eight years in Salzburg in the summers and when the children were young, we could sometimes take them with us but of course school then meant that wasn’t always possible, but I always tried to do something in the holiday period with the kids.
Images: © [2024] Clive Barda
“I have no regrets except missing some of my children’s Nativity plays or the first time they scored a goal or try. But 20 years down the road they didn’t say “you weren’t there”. They know that for a lot of parents their early careers have to take priority over their private life. It went hand in hand with my career for my three boys that dad was going to be away building his career and making a living.”
“I did make the decision though to do more concerts, recordings, TV and radio work and perform at the British houses.”
There was even a mini controversy when dad Bryn pulled out of performances of the Ring Cycle when one of the children was injured and needed an operation on a finger. The opera world loves to create images of divas (male or female) who cancel performances with famous examples being legends such as Maria Callas. However, Bryn immediately bounced back from any such criticisms.
“In those early years I followed roles that suited my voice with a lot of Mozart work. Fortunately, most opera houses have Mozart in their programmes!
“I also watched to see how other singers had developed and built their careers, so I was able to see what they did.
“I was able to go to Australia for a production with a great conductor and my career developed but at one stage I thought I would buy a house in Cardiff as I thought that most of my work would be there.
“I have always been fortunate to work at the Royal Opera House and many of my role debuts have been there.”
Bryn and his eldest three sons
For this current run of Tosca at the Royal Opera, Bryn sings with the acclaimed Swansea soprano Natalya Romaniw, another alumni of both the Guildhall and of BBC Singer of the World. It was in her year representing Wales, twenty years ago, that Natalya first met Bryn when he was performing at the prestigious opera house singing, yes, Scarpia in Tosca. Like Bryn, Natalya also won the Katherine Ferrier prize while at the Guildhall, along the with the college’s coveted Gold Medal. Again, like Bryn in her very early career she sang with the Morrison Orpheus and Dunvant Male Voice choirs. After the Singer of the World, Natalya’s early career took her to Houston as a young resident artist. Then in 2021 she and Bryn appeared together at Grange Park Opera in Surrey in another of those giant roles Bryn has made his own, the title role of Falstaff in the Verdi comedy. Natalya sang Alice Ford. It is a role Bryn says that he also cherishes, following in the illustrious footstep of that other great operatic knight Sir Geraint Evans, and that he has performed with Welsh National Opera. The scarlet costume, originally created for baritone Donald Maxwell, when he created the role in the Peter Stein late 1990s production that toured to Tokyo, Milan and New York, has been on exhibition in the foyer of Wales Millennium Centre for the beleaguered company’s latest season, as perhaps a reminder of happier times.
Interestingly, in 2008 Bryn announced he was taking a sabbatical from opera production. But not long afterwards he returned to sing with Welsh National Opera to squeeze into that red Falstaff costume. It was nine years since he played the role at Covent Garden, and he had sung in the production. Then it was as the role of Ford in 1993 when he was in his twenties.
It was a performance by Sir Geraint Evans, possibly his last, at the Royal Opera House that totally hooked the young Bryn to an operatic career. Sir Geraint was singing the role of Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in a televised performance, that was capped by the Welsh National Anthem being sung at the curtain call. It is then fitting that one of his most recent roles at the Royal Opera was also singing Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore.
It was with WNO he had made his professional operatic debut in 1990 as Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte. He made his international operatic debut in 1991 as Speaker in Die Zauberflöte at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels and made his American debut in the same year as Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro with Santa Fe Opera. Other roles performed during his career include Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust, both the title role and Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Jochanaan in Strauss’ Salome, the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Wolfram in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Balstrode in Britten’s Peter Grimes and Four Villains in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann, and his role debut in the title-role of Rachmaninov’s Aleko, in double bill with Gianni Schicchi, again singing the title-role for Grange Opera.
Bryn is also comfortable with more contemporary musical theatre writing and made quite a splash singing the demon barber of Fleet Street Sweeney Todd at English National Opera with Emma Thompson as his accomplice. In a recent newspaper question and answer session when asked if he had a celebrity crush, he named Dame Emma. He reprised the role in the Live from Lincoln Center concert production, with Emma Thompson as Mrs Lovett. He also told that newspaper who he would choose to play him in a biopic film; it would have been Meat Loaf.
As a giant of the concert stage, highlight performances include his Brazilian debut with the Mozarteum Brasileiro Academic Orchestra in São Paulo, a Wagner gala with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the iconic Teatro Colón, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, and Antonio Pappano’s farewell concert at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. He also appeared in recital with his wife, harpist Hannah Stone, and pianist Annabel Thwaite at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and Carnegie Hall in New York.
In 2011, Bryn performed with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on the great lawn of Central Park, New York, for more than 70,000 people.
That love of musicals is also demonstrated in his recordings. He has recorded albums of songs from the great musicals of Lerner and Loewe and Rodgers and Hammerstein, for example. The recording accolades include being a Grammy, Classical Brit and Gramophone Award winner with a discography encompassing operas of Mozart, Wagner and Strauss, and more than fifteen solo discs including Lieder, American musical theatre, Welsh songs and sacred repertory.
Feathers in the cap? Bryn was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to Opera in 2003 and was the second recipient of the Queen’s Medal for Music. The previous recipient was conductor Sir Charles Mackerras. Queen Elizabeth II presented the medal during a special concert to celebrate her 80th birthday in 2006. He received a knighthood for his services to music in 2017, was honoured with the title of Austrian Kammersänger for his services to the Wiener Staatsoper and awarded a European Cultural Award at the Tonhalle, Zurich, in recognition of his extraordinary music career in 2022. He was the last recipient of the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation and in 2015, he was given The Freedom of the City of London. He even has a whisky named after him. The Penderyn Icons of Wales whisky features Bryn in the role of Falstaff on the label. It was launched at the Royal Welsh College in 2016.
Bryn has also been one of his generation’s great Wotans in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. His favourite productions were also at the Royal Opera House in the Keith Warner production with Anthony Pappano conducting. That also included two performances at the Royal Albert Hall, one conducted by Pappano and the other the legendary Daniel Barenboim. He also is particularly keen on the Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan in New York under director Robert Lepagne. Perhaps again showing his passion for the new, at the time he talked of his excitement that this was a production that embraced the opportunities for technology and broadcast. Perhaps surprisingly he has never sung at the home of Wagnerian opera, Bayreuth, but he still raves about the years he worked at the great Austrian opera festival Salzburg in the Geraint Mortimer years.
But back to the present and Bryn’s next chance to do what he does best, sing and at the same time promote his love for the Welsh language, is a series of festive concerts in London, Bristol, Manchester and the Swansea Arena. The programme will of course include at least one of his own favourite Welsh carols. The concert will also feature the Orchestra of Welsh National.
Those early days involved taking every opportunity to work and to build that fledgling career. That was also from his home base in Snowdonia where he married Lesley in 1987 and started his family having three sons. He married the former Royal Harpist Hannah Stone at the Caersalem Newydd Baptist Church, in the Hannah’s home city of Swansea.
“Swansea has always been really important to me and gave me lots of opportunities. In my early career I sang a lot with the Morrison Orpheus and Dunvant Male voice choirs, and I went on tour with them to Canada and the United States and their choristers sang at my wedding and of course I’ve married a Swansea girl!
“Wales was always going to be home, and it still is. There was a time when I was thinking of buying a house in Cardiff in those early days as I was sure all my work would be with Welsh National Opera!”
Rather than regrets Bryn is more possibly a little shell shocked by the list of amazing things that have happened over the years. Yes, plenty of feathers in the cap. “Having done so many things I really do sometimes pinch myself to believe it’s true I look back at how my mother and father did everything they could to help me, and I am still amazed how I went from the North Wales farm to the stage of La Scala in Milan.”
“Who would have thought I would sing in the 1999 World Cup opening with Shirley Bassey and then in 2023 be singing at the coronation of Charles III and then singing Brahms Requiem in Vienna being transmitted to Southeast Asia being conducted with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado. Yes, it would have been nice to have won BBC Cardiff Singer of the World but there was a rather good baritone that year!”
He says singing at the Coronation was the most nervous he has ever been for a performance. In May 2023, the bass-baritone’s rendition of Paul Mealor’s “Coronation Kyrie” at the coronation service of Charles III at Westminster Abbey, alongside the Choir of Westminster Abbey, marked the first-ever Welsh language performance at a coronation.
However, he does not mean feathers in the cap in the way it is sometime seen as preening or boasting. Rather, it is always looking for something new. As he says, he is always looking for new opportunities. Thus, his excitement about Yr Llais with S4C and the new singing project with the Royal Welsh College.
Yr Llais will be produced by Boom Cymru, part of ITV Studios, and will air in 2025. Bryn is one of the four Coaches from different musical backgrounds who will sit in the most iconic chairs on television. It will be eight 90-minute programmes and is the 75th adaptation of the original format of The Voice, making it the biggest and most successful format brand in the non-scripted global marketplace to date.
Hopefuls looking for a shot at stardom will take to the stage in a bid to be crowned this series’ winner, securing an exciting 12 month mentoring scheme and opportunities to perform on S4C programmes.
Bryn said the series will see contestants take part in blind auditions as they try to impress the four coaches who alongside Bryn are Welsh–Jamaican reggae artist and presenter Aleighcia Scott, singer/songwriters Yws Gwynedd and Bronwen Lewis.
“The first session has been filmed. We had to choose singers from a choice of eight from the first round. I absolutely loved it. The Voice is like when players audition for an orchestra they audition blind that is they have to do so unseen. This is similar and you really have to concentrate. I know that it’s the first three minutes of a performance that really captures your attention.”
The other project he is putting his name to is the new initiative at the Royal Welsh College, The Foundation. Sir Bryn Terfel will support future generations of performing artists.
“I have now started working on the new project with the Royal Welsh College which will include a biannual singing competition. I have run my own foundation, but I found recently that although we have concerts and dinners, I haven’t really been able to add anything more, so I then met the college, and we decided to merge it into the new project called Cronfa. It has a £15,000 prize. That is a huge amount. I remember winning the Katherine Ferrier prize and I made great use of the money that was when I was still a student at the Guildhall. There will be a new Song Prize that will be offered every two years.
“I have reached a time in my life and career when it matters deeply to me to get behind the next generations of performers and creative artists and to establish a permanent foundation here at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama to do so.
“Hannah and I are now working closely with the Leadership and Development teams at the College to find and inspire the first philanthropists and donors who will join us on this exciting journey to build a new and lasting fund. Everyone is welcome.”
In launching the new initiative, the College said that over the next three years, he and the College will work together to identify a small group of patrons who will be lead partners in this venture and who will contribute founding gifts to build towards a £5m fund. Special fundraising events are to be organised, and a regular giving programme is established and managed through RWCMD Development.
Cronfa Syr Bryn Terfel will also be promoted as a very special destination for legacy giving.
The first Cronfa Syr Bryn Terfel projects will include thenew Cronfa Syr Bryn Terfel Song Prize, hosted at the Royal Welsh College for the first time in Autumn 2025, and will be worth £5,000 to the winner and offered every two years. The Prize will be open to singing students from conservatoires in the UK and from a selected group of international institutions. Competitors will be required to offer a programme that includes a song in Welsh as well as one that puts a spotlight on their own language and culture. There will be anew suite of Cronfa Syr Bryn Terfel scholarships and bursaries, awarded across all disciplines in the College and Junior College, where there is the greatest financial need.In addition, there will be projects and commissions that celebrate the Welsh language and Welsh culture, with an emphasis on interactions with other international cultures.
Bryn who is vice president of the RWCMD, said, “Welsh song, or Caneuon Cymraeg, has been part of my life since I was a child. Throughout my career, as well as being a proud exponent of the great German Lieder, French Chansons and English Song, I have always championed the folksongs and art songs of this musical nation.
“But Welsh song is still something of an unknown outside Wales so I’m excited to share these wonderful gems with emerging singers, to support them in their development as artists. I hope students will find a love of these songs, and of singing in Welsh that they will take with them in their future careers.”
He said that while this new international biennial song prize will celebrate the rich diversity in individual cultures and the potential of powerful expression through different languages, competitors will need to include at least one song in Welsh their programmes.
The three-day residency and prize will be open to young singers who are completing their undergraduate degree studies and moving towards the important masters training that will set them on their paths to professional careers.
For the first edition of the prize, all the main conservatoires in the UK will be invited to put forward candidates, and Bryn and the College are working together to ensure that the Prize can open up to more conservatoires and more young singers in the future.
The inaugural Sir Bryn Terfel Song Prize Residency will be from Wednesday 5th November 2025 and the inaugural Sir Bryn Terfel Song Prize Final will be on Saturday 8th November 2025.
A major star now, Bryn is well aware that it takes a lot of work to become recognised. “In this career recognition comes after a lot of work and you really have to negotiate your way. You have to work wherever you can, in television and radio. I can remember taking lots of different work including with the Royal Welsh College, BBC Radio Wales, doing reviews and making guest appearances and so on, to make a living wherever I could in those days.
“But for me it has also always been about taking Welsh song in the Welsh language to the world. It has always been important to me, and I always try to include Welsh songs in my concerts; I will in the Christmas concerts.” It is also why Welsh song must be included in the new song prize.
That love of the language includes working with other Welsh singers, such as the current Tosca performances. Along with Bryn and Natalya, the cast includes another Royal Opera stalwart, Aled Hall from Carmarthenshire. “When I hear Welsh being spoken it is something that makes this North Walian warbler smile in rehearsals, and I have multiple cups of tea listening to Aled talking and now also Natalya. I love listening to some of her stories as well. There is a lot of history in these opera houses, and it is important for our generation that we hear about the singers who have come before us great singers like Geraint Evans and Dame Gwyneth Jones. It is great to know that there are other singers now like Natalya who are making their career as well. Yes, Wales does punch above its weight.”
Yet opportunities, including financial, are more important than ever for young people forging careers in the arts, trying to get their first feathers in their caps. Bryn recognises this is a particularly difficult time for opera companies and for singers. This specially after the long Covid shutdowns deprived many singers and musicians, many of whom are freelance, of their incomes in the vital early stages of their careers.
While Covid was a huge problem for artists and companies (it meant the loss of Bryn singing in a planned Duke Bluebeard’s Castle with Welsh National Opera), financial cuts have brought even more crises for the opera world.
“It is very worrying what’s happening to the opera world abd has thrown his dipport behind campaigns to remove the threats to our opera companies. I’m also a patron of Mid Wales opera which also had a terrible time financially. I’m patron of a lot of organisations and I am really happy to do so. If only there were more days in a week, and I would be able to help organisations even more. I’m just writing and signing more letters now about the threat to our opera companies and futures for singers and musicians.”
It was, however, during lockdown that another new venture for the family had its origins.
“Another exciting thing is my wife Hannah has just opened a gym in Penarth where we live called Arth which of course is Welsh for bear as in Pen-arth translating as the bear’s head. She has established it with Laura Payne who played rugby for Wales.”
Laura qualified from Loughborough University in 2004 and went on to earn 33 Welsh rugby caps before retiring and opening my first gym which was Atlantic Way CrossFit in Sully. Since lockdown, she did bootcamps at the seafront as well as personal training outdoors or at the clients’ home gyms. Arth now offers various strength and sweat classes run by both Hannah and Laura. The gym provides shower facilities, weights, squat racks, benches and other exercise equipment. ‘Arth’ is a new fitness studio based on Glebe Street opposite local café The busy Teapot.
Racing on (the Royal Opera has a call for singers by a certain time on performance days),
Bryn fizzles with enthusiasm for new projects although not enough hours in the day to bring everything to fruition is not the only restraining factor. I joke that Wales needs to cheekily extends it by a long, thin sliver into Gloucestershire so that we can take in the excellent Longborough Opera that has such strong Welsh roots. It is run by Cardiff-based Polly Graham and its Artistic Director is Penarth-based Anthony Negus. The annual festival often provides a showcase for Welsh talent. “No,” says Bryn, “We need to start our own festival.” I float the pie in the sky idea of a Welsh summer festival at Craig yr Nos, the home of the Victorian operatic prima donna Dame Adelina Patti which still has an exquisite jewel of a theatre. Breathing new operatic life into Craig yr Nos was a project close to the heart of Dame Gwynedd Jones. Yet with the perilous state of funding for existing opera and other arts projects finding any government commitment for such projects seems even more of a pipe dream.
One of his great ambitions remains to perform in a touring concert performance of Fiddler on the Roof. He made his debut in the role of Reb Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof for Grange Park Opera and includes its well-known songs in concerts and CD recordings.
“It is my 60th birthday year coming up and we will definitely have a big concert like we did for my 50th birthday. That one was at the Royal Albert Hall and next year the concert will be at Wales Millennium Centre. I can’t believe it was nearly 10 years ago. It was such a great night. My eldest son Thomas and his wife are expecting their first baby as well so that will be very exciting.”
With that breathtaking romp through plans and endless possibilities moves on to recreating Grange Park Opera’s Robin’s scheme where opera is taken to school children in the South of East of England in Wales “lets’ do it Mike!”
Then before Bryn can launch on even more possible future plans it is time to check in at the Royal Opera for another night at the opera for this unstoppable Knight of the Opera.
- Tosca, Royal Opera until December 13. rbo.org.uk or 020 7304 4000
- Bryn’s Christmas will take place at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London on 16 December, Swansea Arena on 17 December, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester on 19 December and Bristol Beacon on 20 December. For tickets visit: https://wno.org.uk/whats-on/bryns-christmas#venues-and-tickets