The world-famous Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel is a devoted family man, reluctant to be away from home during the holiday season. He agreed to a "whirlwind trip" to Utah for performances with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir because of one thing -- the Welsh connection.
Terfel and American mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will join the choir and the orchestra at Temple Square for three concerts this week, and for the choir's traditional Sunday morning television broadcast.
Von Stade has a wide following in Utah, cultivated on three previous visits. She appeared with the Tabernacle Choir and Utah Symphony for a Tanner Gift of Music concert in 1991, guested with the Utah Symphony in 1991, and performed again with the Tabernacle Choir during the 2002 Olympic Games.
Terfel's visit to Utah will be his first. He consented to come after learning that 19th-century Welsh immigrants played a major role in the development of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Utah's early cultural life.
Choral music has long been an essential ingredient of life in Wales, where each town's choirs -- especially its men's choirs -- are a point of pride. Choral groups in Wales vie for musical honors with an intensity reserved in most places for sporting events. Singing festivals in Wales, called eisteddfods, draw visitors from around the world. So, though Terfel grew up on a sheep and cattle farm in the remote Snowdonia region of North Wales, he has a rich musical background.
"Music was in the house all the time," Terfel said. "My mother is in a female choir and my father is in a male voice choir, so they were always learning or playing music at home. It's a part of our heritage."
A song in their hearts: The many Welsh mining and farming families who converted to Mormonism and immigrated to Utah in the 19th century brought their culture with them -- including love for music, and an affinity for rugged country life. Here in Utah, Welsh choral traditions met with the English tradition of brass band. A musical heritage born in the British Isles was passed on in tiny towns all over Utah.
A passage in Charles Jeffrey Calman's book The Mormon Tabernacle Choir says:
"The citizens formed choirs and bands to perform not only in church, but also for concerts, for public celebrations, for funerals; some established music schools. These small-town choirs often performed amazingly sophisticated music. In Parowan, a southern Utah town of only a few hundred residents, the choir and a small band performed movements from a Haydn mass -- in Latin."
Utah's first choir got its start as soon as the oxen were unhitched from the first pioneer wagons. The singing group that became the Mormon Tabernacle Choir gave its first performance less than a month after Brigham Young gazed on the Salt Lake Valley and pronounced it "the right place" on July 24, 1847.
In the Tabernacle Choir's early years, many of its members were Welsh-born -- as was its first permanent conductor, John Parry, who immigrated from North Wales in 1849. Evan Stephens, the conductor who elevated the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from a raw group of amateurs to a nationally-respected musical ensemble, immigrated from South Wales at the age of 12.
During Evans' conducting tenure, from 1890 to 1916, the choir first left its isolated Western valley for several concert tours. These included performances at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the 1909 Pacific Exposition Eisteddfod in Seattle, according to Calman.
In 1911, a time of virulent anti-Mormon sentiment in the United States, Evans took the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the major cities of the East Coast. The trip included a command concert at the White House in Washington, D.C. The choir's ability to generate positive feelings toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proved invaluable.
A Welsh childhood: The earliest members of the Tabernacle Choir would likely recognize facets of Terfel's childhood in Wales. Like Evan Stephens, Terfel spoke only Welsh as a child and grew up in a culture in which religion, social life and music intertwined. Despite the distractions of his globe-spanning career, Terfel is raising his three sons much as he was brought up. Folk tales, alive with enchantment and brimming with Welsh pride, are read at bedtime. And songs are sung -- in Welsh, of course.
"The 9-year-old just now begins to speak English," Terfel said. "The younger two only speak Welsh."
During Terfel's own childhood, music was paramount:
"I sang from 4 years old onward," Terfel said. "The little Methodist church in our village was a meeting place for people from the farms scattered for miles around."
Terfel remembers families gathering on Sundays for "friendship," "a bowl of soup" and "the singing of hymns."
Singing soon became the dominant interest in Terfel's life. When his friends began making traditional career choices, he hesitated -- until someone suggested he try for a place in an English music school.
The idea of a Welsh farm boy in a sophisticated London music school was audacious. But, like the pioneers who left Wales for Utah so long ago, Terfel stepped forward into the unknown.
"I decided that if I was accepted -- it's a new field to plow," Terfel said. "I went out of my square mile in Wales and auditioned at the Guildhall School of Music in London. It was my first journey out of Wales. It was a huge culture shock."
Terfel sang songs for the auditioners, recited poetry, and hoped.
"The panel thought that I had the makings of a professional singer," he said.
As obvious as that seems now, Terfel was less than certain at the time. Still, he decided to try.
"It was a choice that many a Welshman should have made in the last 40 years, but they didn't have the confidence," Terfel said. "My father has a glorious bass voice, but he thought agriculture was a better life. I was ready to fail in London, and figured that anything positive that happened was a bonus. . . . I knew I always had farming to fall back upon."
There is little chance Terfel will ever raise livestock for a living.
"Everything turned out beautifully," he said.
New horizons: Today Terfel is recognized as the greatest baritone of opera's younger generation, and a premier interpreter of such operatic roles as Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's Falstaff. Apart from his prominence in the world of opera, Terfel's willingness to span musical genres has won him a huge popular following. His latest album, "Bryn Terfel Sings Favorites" -- an unlikely compilation of arias, folk songs and popular tunes -- is taking Britain by storm.
"It's shocking how the public has embraced it," Terfel said. "A classical artist in the Top Ten of the pop charts in Britain? That's where you find Robby Williams, Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. I'm there. It's not going to last for long, but it's another feather in one's cap."
In his Utah appearances, Terfel's musical versatility will be apparent. Inspirational songs such as "The Lord's Prayer" and "The Impossible Dream" are on the program, along with many Christmas carols. An operatic aria might show up at encore time, Terfel hinted. But the simplest songs are providing the greatest challenge:
"I have to learn these carols all from scratch," Terfel said. "I know them off by heart in Welsh, but I've never sung things like 'Silent Night' in English. I'm frantically learning."
No such worries will trouble Terfel during "Suo Gan" -- a traditional Welsh song. Though not a Christmas carol, it fits well on the program, said Terfel.
"It's a lullaby about a mother cradling her little baby to go to sleep. I can see Mary in that quiet stable, in the darkness, with the animals, lulling her baby to sleep."
A Utah connection: Terfel said Utah first entered his consciousness when he sang the title role in "Sweeney Todd" in Chicago Lyric Opera's acclaimed production last year. Rising opera star Celena Shafer, from Centerville, was his Johanna.
"I always felt really bad, because Sweeney attempts to kill [Johanna] towards the end," Terfel said, "Celena's a very nice girl, with an angelic voice."
Despite the troubled relationship of their onstage characters, the two singers became good friends, and discussed with each other the challenges of blending family life with the vagabond world of opera.
"[Terfel] is just the sweetest guy," Shafer said. "He was so nice to me and my husband when we were in Chicago. He was so supportive in letting me know that you can find a balance between career and family."
And what are Shafer's memories of sharing the stage with the great Bryn Terfel?
"I have one thing to say," said Shafer, "and that's 'Wow.' He has such a great voice, and such presence. . . . No wonder he's a star."
Four performances
* Baritone Bryn Terfel and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade will appear with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square in four performances this week at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. The concerts are Thursday (preview), Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The weekly broadcast of "Music and the Spoken Word" on Dec. 14 at 9:30 a.m. in the Conference center will also feature von Stade and Terfel as guest performers, and will be followed by a mini-concert of additional music.
* All four events are free, but tickets have already been distributed. Last-minute seating may be available. The standby line will form at 6 p.m. at the north gate on Temple Square for the evening performances, and at 7:30 a.m. for the Sunday broadcast.
* For more information, call 801-240-3418.
