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Whatever the alchemy that makes a star of a fine singer, Terfel has it. All his Metropolitan Opera performances this fall in the title role of The Marriage of Figaro and as Leporello in Don Giovanni "went clean" -- theatrical slang for sold out -- before the first curtain went up, and there were scuffles in the line for tickets to his New York City lieder recital last month. Onstage his presence is riveting. Both Figaro and Leporello are servants, but there is no trace of the oaf or the buffoon in Terfel's portrayals. In both parts he can be physically threatening. In Don Giovanni he is a formidable enforcer of the Don's will, grabbing the young husband Masetto and spinning him into vertigo. With the equally tall James Morris singing the Don, the stage becomes electric, and Franco Zeffirelli's bland 1990 production a hair-raising drama of licentiousness and revenge.
Directors love working with Terfel. Luc Bondy, who directed him as Jochanaan in an acclaimed Salome in Salzburg two years ago, recalls, "Our first meeting was funny. He was so young and so big. I thought, 'This big, big baby could be my son."' Bondy learned that Terfel "is not a guy who is pretentious and insists on his own way." On Terfel's wish list are parts like Falstaff, Nick Shadow in The Rake's Progress and Escamillo in Carmen. His first Wagner, probably at the Met, will be the comparatively light role of Wolfram in Tannhauser, with its lyrical ode to the evening star -- cat's cream to a baritone with Terfel's plush tone.
His worldly ambitions are few. "I'm too big to fit into a Porsche," he muses. He'd like a snooker table. Oh, and a house in North Wales, "so I can fly home like a bird." The greatest satisfaction his financial success has brought him is helping his father buy the family farm. "They nurtured my talent when I didn't even know it," he says of his parents. "I was gently placed into this tradition." Here is a man who just may survive the scourge of celebrity.