Bryn Terfel

Eisteddfod platforms gave Bryn Terfel his first audiences, in the Welsh-speaking farming country round Pant Glas where he was born in 1965; he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Arthur Reckless and Rudolf Piernay, and won the Lieder Prize at the 1989 Cardiff Singer of the World. Mozart came first — Figaro, Leporello, then the Don himself — before the voice moved out towards Wotan, Verdi's Falstaff, Scarpia and Boris Godunov, sung at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera and Salzburg. Recital programmes, oratorio, Welsh repertoire and musical theatre run in parallel with his opera work, which includes both Sweeney Todd and Wotan. He was knighted in 2017. In 2026 he became artistic director of Oxford International Opera, a venture of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director Marios Papadopoulos, whose opening production is Tosca, with Terfel announced as Scarpia. His first engagements were at Welsh National Opera, as Guglielmo in 1990, and the debuts followed quickly: La Monnaie in Brussels and Santa Fe in 1991, then Masetto at Covent Garden and Jochanaan at Salzburg in 1992, and Figaro in Vienna in 1993. He was made CBE in 2003, received the Queen's Medal for Music in 2006 and a European Cultural Award in Zurich in 2022. At the coronation of Charles III on 6 May 2023 he sang Paul Mealor's Kyrie eleison in Welsh, the first Welsh-language work performed at a coronation.