It’s been said that Wales has produced more tenors per head of population than any other country in the world. So what is it about the relatively small country of ours that produces so many talented tenors?
Tim Rhys-Evans from New Tredegar, the musical director of renowned choir Only Men Aloud, aims to find out why Wales has produced so many great tenors in the first part of a new four-part series for BBC Two Wales, Welsh Tenors from Tuesday, March 9.
For Tim the tenor is the voice that really inspires. “He usually gets the best tunes and more often than not ends up with the girl. Women swoon at the sound of his voice and most male singers would kill to be him,” he says. “As a little boy listening to my nana’s records of all the great operatic tenors, I dreamed that one day I would be one and remember the crushing sense of disappointment when my voice broke and I was a baritone.”
His search for the roots of the Welsh tenor start back at his Nana’s house in New Tredegar where Rhys-Evans spent many happy hours listening to opera records. “I still remember being eight or nine and watching Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso and that really stuck with me,” he says. “If it hadn’t been for hearing those voices, I wouldn’t have developed the love for it.”
One Welsh tenor who has been at the top of his game for the past four decades, Dennis O’Neill, was surrounded by music from an early age and believes this was the key to developing his musical talent. “My father had a very good tenor voice and loved Italian opera and I really believe that it is what you hear when you are young that shapes you. Italian opera was always around, then we got involved in the eisteddfod scene and local charity concerts and the mixture was there,” says O’Neill.
In the programme Tim also meets two young potential talents of the future, the rugby-playing 22-year-old Trystan Llyr Griffiths from Clunderwyn, west Wales, and David Mahoney, a former head chorister of Llandaff Cathedral choir in Cardiff. “The tenor is the voice the man wants to have and there’s some aura around the tenor voice that people love,” says Llyr Griffiths.
Proving that today’s tenors have to be so much more than just singers, Wynne Evans has gained national fame from being the operatic star of what has been voted the most irritating advert on TV – the “Go Compare” ads. “They are like little operas, and that’ s the way I treated them,” says Evans of his TV tenor role.
Tuesday, March 9, BBC Two Wales, 7.30pm
