Welsh wonder

Now here’s a question for my Welsh readers: are you fans of Bryn Terfel? I heard him sing the part of Gianni Schicchi at Covent Garden last night and he stole the show. What a man and what a voice! This is a Puccini vignette which they’re showing in a double-bill with Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole and it is great fun. The Puccini story is that Buoso Donati dies and his family are looking forward to getting their hands on the inheritance, only to discover that he’s left everything to the local monastery. “Nobody would have predicted that real tears would flow on Buoso’s death.” To cut a long story short, Gianni Schicchi (not a member of the family) is brought in to see if he can change the will and he ends up masquerading as the dying Buoso and dictating a new will to the family lawyer. Of course, not all goes as the family has planned and although they get various parts of the estate which they’ve requested, the house in Florence, the much coveted mule and the mills which they each desperately want go to….Buoso’s “devoted friend Gianni Schicchi.”