Colin Farrell doesn’t have many ‘true friends.’ But Brendan Gleeson is one of them.
Gleeson, best known to fans of the stage, screen and Broadway musicals he’s played as Colin Farrell, was in New York recently to promote his new Broadway play, Love & Other Drugs, in advance of its opening on April 12. He and Farrell did an interview for The Irish Times in the lobby of a fancy hotel (the St. Regis) while waiting for their meeting to begin.
They talked for nearly an hour, and the conversation turned to Farrell’s love of music. The actor’s first love, he said, was classical music: “I loved Mozart. I loved Mozart’s string quartet. I loved Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2. And then gradually over the years I started to play opera. I played Rigoletto and Don Carlo in the original Ring. I also played the role of Belshazzar in the Ring cycle for the second time, and I’ve also played Siegfried in my three Ring operas. I also played Don Ottavio and Rigoletto for three different shows in the same opera, and there was a fourth Ring opera that I played, but I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
Farrell’s wife, Lorie, played the role of Belshazzar in the Ring cycle.
“We’re very lucky in America that it’s the case that people can come to Broadway and get this kind of exposure,” he said. “This is the third Ring cycle, and I’ve also got my opera in the works. I’ve always wanted to play that part in the opera.”
Farrell, who also starred in The Little Mermaid, in the original Prince of Broadway, and in the movie version of The Pirates of Penzance, as well as in the Broadway production of The Secret Garden and musicals such as The Phantom of the Opera, Gypsy and Chicago, said he loves the