Erlkonig bryn terfel biography

Terfel's ''Erlkonig'' was a quasi-drama.
Singing Roxanne at Sting's birthday celebration in New York.
Sir Bryn Terfel holds the Schubert Club record for singers.

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With five appearances to date, Sir Bryn Terfel holds the Schubert Club record for singers. His inspiring story goes back to when he was a boy of four in rural North Wales and began singing on stage at the Eisteddfod, the annual Welsh festival of poetry and music:

When he was 23 Bryn entered the prestigious Cardiff Singer of the World competition in the Welsh capital. Although he came in second to Dmitri Hvorostovsky (another Schubert Club “Cherished Guest”) in the famous “Battle of the Baritones”, it brought him worldwide recognition and launched his career. Here he is at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1989, singing an aria from what would become one of his signature roles, Mozart’s Figaro:

In 1995, having just signed an exclusive recording contract, Terfel recorded two of his most beautiful recitals. This is a pair of related excerpts (audio only) from those albums, both poignant songs on the theme of leaving home: “Whither Must I Wander”, which Terfel sang in his 2004 Schubert Club recital, is one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Songs of Travel”, set

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Terfel: Natural Born Lieder : Expressive, Heroic-Voiced Baritone Rises in West With Costa Mesa Recital

COSTA MESA — What is this nonsense about recitals being a dying, if not already dead, art form? Somebody had better inform mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and baritone Bryn Terfel.

The two, separately, have infused local recitals with amazing vitality and personality.

Bartoli sang at the Orange County Performing Arts Center last year, and Thursday it was Terfel’s turn. Both appearances were sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

The 31-year-old Terfel was making not just his West Coast recital debut, but his West Coast debut, period. Los Angeles will have to wait until Nov. 4 to hear him at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, in recital.

It is not just Terfel’s heroic voice that carries the day. Terfel is a natural communicator. He sings with joy, with pleasure, with heart, with animation, with his face, his eyes as well as with his voice, with the human touch.

And he does it all with apparent ease.

He fills the hall with a dark, virile sound, but he al