Bryn Terfel’s annual summer festival on the Faenol estate at Bangor in Wales has been cancelled for the second year running due to poor ticket sales – and this, despite £250,000 of public money given to the singer last month by the Welsh Assembly.

The grant provoked widespread resentment, coming at a time when every arts organisation in the country is having to cut budgets.

A dejected Terfel told BBC Wales: ‘We have looked at the situation in great detail and from every possible angle. We have found no other workable solution.’ The only event to survive is a concert by the aging Irish boy band, Westlife.

Neither the grant nor the festival yielded much public benefit. Both may now be written off as the singer’s vanity fair.

Bryn Terfel’s annual summer festival on the Faenol estate at Bangor in Wales has been cancelled for the second year running due to poor ticket sales – and this, despite £250,000 of public money given to the singer last month by the Welsh Assembly.

The grant provoked widespread resentment, coming at a time when every arts organisation in the country is having to cut budgets.

A dejected Terfel told BBC Wales: ‘We have looked at the situation in great detail and from every possible angle. We have found no other workable solution.’ The only event to survive is a concert by the aging Irish boy band, Westlife.

Neither the grant nor the festival yielded much public benefit. Both may now be written off as the singer’s vanity fair.