Bryn Terfel on singing Tevye: 'I've always felt the character is in my blood'

It is one of the quintessential Jewish roles of musical theatre — Tevye, in Fiddler On The Roof — and, this summer, for a season at the Grange Park Opera in Hampshire, the part of the impoverished milkman in pre-revolutionary Russia is being played by Bryn Terfel, the world-renowned opera singer, who is a) manifestly Welsh and b) not remotely Jewish.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” says Terfel, who before he gets stuck into If I Were A Rich Man, Tradition and the rest, will be variously starring in Der Fliegende Holländer at the Royal Opera House, The Damnation Of Faust in Australia and Sweeney Todd with The English National Opera alongside Emma Thompson. “I can’t wait to play the poor milkman,” he says with a smile.

It was Wasfi Kani OBE, the founder and CEO of the Grange Park Opera, whose idea it was to offer Terfel the part made famous by the likes of Topol, Zero Mostel and Paul Michael Glaser.

“I’d done a couple of operas for them, and Wasfi wanted to try something different,” he explains. “That enticed me over towards Winchester. I thought it was the perfect vehicle. It’s such a great role. He’s a man struggling through adverse conditions, with a balance between laughter and tears. Obviously it’s a comic role as well — it’s a tour de force.”

Now 49, Terfel has been one of the world’s pre-eminent opera singers for a quarter-century, having made his operatic debut as Guglielmo in Così Fan Tutte at the Welsh National Opera in 1990. His international operatic career began the following year when he sang the Speaker in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. He is a frequent visitor to the world’s major opera companies and concert halls, known for his portrayals of Figaro and Falstaff, acclaimed for his performances of the Wagner roles of Wotan, Hans Sachs and Der Fliegende Höllander.

As a concert performer, he has appeared in the opening ceremony of the Wales Millennium Centre, BBC Last Night of the Proms, the Royal Variety Show, and a gala concert with Andrea Bocelli in Central Park, New York. For nine years, he has hosted his own festival in Faenol, North Wales. He is a Grammy, Classical Brit and Gramophone Award winner with a discography encompassing operas of Mozart, Wagner and Strauss, and more than 10 solo discs ranging from American musical theatre to Welsh songs.

In 2003, he was made a CBE for services to opera in the Queen’s New Year Honours list and in 2006 was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music. Not bad for a boy from Wales who spent his teenage years obsessed with nothing but football.

However, in 2012, his perfect life became undone when it was reported that he divorced his wife of 25 years, Lesley, with whom he has three sons, after she left him for an unemployed father of one. The settlement apparently cost him £8 million. Is Tevye’s tumultuous life as a father of five daughters a good representation of Terfel’s own, especially given recent events?

“Most definitely,” he says with a heavy sigh. Moving on, I ask whether this is the first time he’s played a Jewish character, and his response is somewhat tetchy.

“I thought someone might ask me that,” he says. “And yet I’ve not been asked if it’s the first time I’ve portrayed a malcontent police officer in Rome or a troubled god. But yes, it will be the first impoverished Jewish milkman from a village in 1905 about to be castigated by Russians that I’ve played.”

Does he agree it is a role that might fall more naturally to a Jewish performer?

“You might have to ask whoever cast me that question,” he replies, somewhat tartly. “I will give it 100 percent because I absolutely adore the piece and have since I was a teenager. There weren’t that many musicals I liked as a football-crazy teenager.”

Fair enough. But if they did an opera about the life of Harry Secombe, would he not recoil just the teensiest bit if they didn’t give the starring role to a Welshman?

“Oh my god,” he roars. “What a statement! That is so weird!” He’s not horrified by the comparison, just shocked by the coincidence — he was having a drink in Chicago not long ago when someone asked Terfel whether he would like to play the rotund late Goon in a mini-series about Peter Sellers. He declined, but by way of responding to my enquiry he says he believes Secombe would have made a fine Tevye.

Were there any Jews in Pant Glas, Caernarfonshire, North Wales, where the bass-baritone grew up, a farmer’s son?

“No, not in North Wales,” he says. Then he considers the question some more. “Maybe there were.”
Might there be an affinity between the Welsh and Jews — both fiercely patriotic, rather beleaguered, from tiny nation states?

He laughs.“When you put it like that, there might be a case to be made,” he says, adding: “Sometimes I have sleepless nights about decisions I have to make.”

He returns to the matter at hand. “I’m going to have terrific fun with this role. I’ve already started growing the beard, so I can’t turn back now.”

I hear there will be a cantor on hand to give advice?

“Most probably,” he admits. “I might get some coaching on the dialogue. I might reach out to Emma Thompson. And I’ve got a couple of wonderful Jewish friends — Jewish baritones — and they could help as well.”

He lives in Cardiff but it is on the other side of Wales, in the far north, where there is a permanent monument
to him. In Bangor, Gwynedd, there is a theatre named after him —the Theatr Bryn Terfel — though he says he is “troubled by my acceptance of it. Who am I to think that my name is to be carrying such a wonderful building?

“But then I grappled with the thought and thought my musical heritage was in that city, I had my clarinet and trumpet exams there, I sang in local competitions and concerts, I went to theatre there. That part of the world was so important in my development. Perhaps one day I might stage Fiddler On The Roof there.’’

Who is the most famous Jewish person on his iPhone contacts?

“I wish I could say Bette Midler,” he says.

He wonders if Midler — who played one of Tevye’s daughters in the original Broadway show — might be asked to play his wife, Golde.

Terfel has recorded CDs of songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein and performed in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall celebrating the work of Stephen Sondheim.

And now he is to appear in a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and a book by Joseph Stein. Has he ever detected a strong Jewish sensibility across such work?

“I wouldn’t tie it down in that way,” he decides. What is exercising him more, he says, is learning the role of Tevye, including the odd bit of Yiddish. Has he begun to incorporate any phrases into his daily life yet?

“Oy vey?” he offers. “All I can say is, I can’t wait for the first day of rehearsals. This piece catches people’s imaginations. It’s hugely successful. And it is a monumental comic role that also touches on incredible grief, about a wonderful man trying to keep tradition — as he says [starts to sing]: ‘Tradition! Tradition!’”

Talking of Yiddish phrases, I suggest to Terfel that his parents, when they come and watch him perform at the GPO this summer, will feel considerable naches. “Definitely,” he says. And he should probably expect some kvelling from his mother in the front row.

“Well,” he says, apologetically, “she’s a very quiet lady, usually the quietest in the audience, so it will probably be very small kvellings.”

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