Wales' greatest singing voice reveals how he plans to take life a little easier now he has turned 40 and has achieved most of his operatic ambitions.
With a large catalogue of recordings behind you, what makes your new album Simple Gifts special?
It's a little adventure out of my usual operatic excursions. Perhaps I am guilty of jumping on the bandwagon of classical artists delving into something considered a crossover. I sold in excess of 600,000 with a certain format, so wouldn't I be silly, both commercially and artistically, not to do it again? I am guilty of doing crossover but I love doing it.
Do you have a great input in choosing the songs for the albums?
With the last one [Bryn] I did, but with this one I gave the record company the chance to give me a set of songs they thought was interesting. Around 70% are songs that I was reacting to: if not the music then the poetry has to strike a chord.
Even with a tried and tested piece such as How Great Thou Art - which is a great hymn anyway - or Amazing Grace or Morning Has Broken, if you listen to the orchestration by Chris Hazell it has a classically orientated taste with a little twist in the tale; a little Celtic flavour as well.
On the album I sing Panis Angelicus with Aled Jones and I also sing with Simon Keenlyside who was at my Faenol Festival. We also sang together in Faust at Covent Garden.
How important is your annual festival which also includes non-operatic singers?
I have read criticisms of me singing candy floss and singing with artists such Van Morrison and Alison Moyet, not that I did share a stage with them. But for me Faenol is something different from the rest of my career. It is something entrepreneurial and giving something back to the location.
When I saw that 13,000 came to the opera night of the last Faenol festival, 35,000 over the four days, I thought that was tremendous. I'm now thinking about next year and I will have a nice young soprano Sally Matthews who sang in the Gilbert and Sullivan in the Proms.
