Wrapped in a crunchy coating of snow, the hills glitter smartly in the morning sunshine. Frosted pines glow white on white in a scene which would drive a Christmas card designer wild with envy. It's a pretty good setting for an interview with a singer from St Petersburg, too, even if the bus speeding along the dual carriageway is wending its efficient way, not along the banks of the Neva, but through the Chilterns from Heathrow Airport to that most English outcrop of dreaming spires, Oxford.
"Ten years we live here," explains Sergei Leiferkus happily as we settle down to tea and Russian biscuits in his living-room beside an enormous Christmas tree swathed in silver and pink. "And we are very happy, because at the same time it's big city and very quiet village." He pronounces it "willage". His speaking voice comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the singing: athletic, powerful, effortlessly melodic. Now it drops to just above a whisper. "Of course, from the first moment they watched us, who we are. These days you can see French people, Hungarians, Americans in this street; but when we came, we were just aliens."
Last week, however, his wife received the stamp of approval in the local post office. "One of the neighbours said; `you know, Leiferkus family is very good family because' - dramatic pause, followed by impeccably-articulated staccato and immaculately- judged crescendo - `they've got fantastic garden'."
He laughs; a deep, musical chuckle. It's easy to see why this man is regarded as one of the opera world's finest actor-singers. Energy emanates from him with an almost audible whizz. He speaks his own brand of English - fast, fluid and entirely devoid of optional subclauses, let alone an umm or an aww. And if he wanted to convince you that black is actually a subtle shade of white, he could do it in seconds, if not less. No wonder he makes such a brilliant baddie - in the operatic sense, of course.
"Yes," he says. "If one day I would write a book, I would call it, How To Be Evil. Tenors are lovers, basses are fathers but baritones are always bad guys. Always. But you know how I do it? I try to show the audience why. Why Iago made Otello crazy. Why Scarpia became Scarpia." Take Othello's nemesis Iago, for example. It's possible to play him as evil from the very beginning of Verdi's opera, but Leiferkus prefers to corrupt him step by step; first he's just someone who's dissatisfied with his lot in life, then he tries something to needle his boss. "And - oh! I'm surprised - it's working! And that pushes Iago to try another horrible thing."
When it comes to pure evil, of course, few can challenge the brutal police chief from Puccini's Tosca. "Scarpia is like a dog; his life is ruined, and he is biting everyone. And then, of course, he falls in love. A very strong man falls in love. A wild passion; he's like an animal, because he understands it's now or never." The voice has become a snarl. Er, what about the prison governor Pizarro from Beethoven's Fidelio, I gulp, mindful of the superb Teldec recording of same, on which Leiferkus sings about running his hapless enemy through the heart with a sword and, well, enjoying it? "Pizarro is a little bit different. His position makes him nasty. Power. Look at the elections now in Russia; the smell of power. Even not money. Power. It's like a sausage smell for the hungry dog. Saliva is running . . . "
Small wonder that the Leiferkus interpretations of these roles, together with his Eugene Onegin and Mephistopheles from Gounod's Faust, are considered by those in the know to be both yardsticks of contemporary performance, and worthy of comparison with great performances of the past. Leiferkus, however, wishes not to imitate, but to innovate. "I did Ballo in Maschera in San Francisco in late summer, and one of the critics wrote that in 25 years of listening to Ballo, it was first time she understood why Renato became so jealous, and how he lost his wife.
"That for me was magic words. And once, after Royal Opera House Tosca, someone wrote, I stood very comfortably in Tito Gobbi's shoes. That's the sort of review I appreciate. Not, for instance, `oh, he has Russian voice'. What does it mean? Maria Callas - Greek voice? Style, or voice? It's different. In my opinion, when critic doesn't know what to write, he writes, `oh, it's Russian voice'. It's bullshit.
"I'm terribly sorry," he adds, with a wicked smile which suggests he isn't sorry at all, "for that." His, however, is a Russian voice in another sense, nurtured and developed in the awe-inspiring artistic surroundings of St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, formerly known as the Kirov Opera. It must have been tough, growing up in St Petersburg during the post-war period? "First of all it was beautiful time, because I was young, and when you're young, you're not asking yourself how your life is tough. And I was lucky because we received fantastic acting education. Six hours drama classes every week; dancing lessons, fighting lessons, everything."
He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, then joined the Maly Theatre, where he spent two years in operetta before becoming a principal singer. In 1977 he joined the Kirov, making his debut in a production of Tchaikovsky's War and Peace conducted by Valery Gergiev. An international career of impressive proportions clearly lay ahead - a career in which Ireland played a modest role, for in 1982 he was engaged to sing at Wexford Festival Opera, and returned for four consecutive seasons, while Barra O'Tuama signed him up for an Opera Gala: Plus tour in 1989 - and he left the Soviet Union at the time of its break-up and settled in the West.
A difficult decision, no doubt, but he's nothing if not pragmatic. "Once or twice a year I'm in Russia, because we keep our country house, our dacha - but that's not my world any more," he says. "You know, in Russian books when nostalgic writers write about `Russia', they write about wild mushrooms and birch trees. Here I have birch trees in my garden, and you can go to the New Forest picking wild mushrooms, if you like. That's not what I miss in Russia.
"What I miss is people. We had a lot of friends in St Petersburg - now, partly they have passed away, partly they are somewhere else, Germany, US, Britain. City itself, yes, I miss that. St Petersburg is fantastic city, but for me is enough to come once or twice a year. That life, I call `my previous life'. Now I'm here, and I'm not one of those people who is dreaming about being somewhere else - who says, `if I'm not at home, it's not real life'. Every day is real life."
For an opera star at the top level, real life translates into a somewhat punishing schedule. Leiferkus has just returned from a gala performance of Wagner's Lohengrin in Mannheim; two weeks before that, it was a revival of Elijah Moshinsky's production of Otello at the Metropolitan in New York. Over the next week he will thrill Irish audiences in Dublin, Limerick and Cork with Italian opera favourites such as the Champagne Aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni, the Toreador's Song from Bizet's Carmen and, with tenor Gabriel Sade, the duet from Verdi's La Forza del Destino, after which he's off to Tenerife and, yes, they do have an opera house there.
On February 1st he will mark 30 years of professional singing. "Thirty years," he muses. "How many years more? I dunno. Maybe five, maybe 10. And then? Be a pensioner. Uh, uh. Not for me." Well, no. Shuffling to the post office to collect his Christmas bonus is one role this baritone is never likely to play.
Sergei Leiferkus will be joined by the Israeli tenor Gabriel Sade and the Romanian soprano Mariana Colpos for the Bord Gais New Millennium Opera Gala tour, at the City Hall in Cork tomorrow night, the University Concert Hall, Limerick on Wednesday 19th and the National Concert Hall, Dublin on Saturday January 22nd. The accompanist will be Philip Thomas.
