February 26, 2004
Opera Singer Releases RAMMSTEIN-Inspired Solo CD
from: www.nynewsday.com
with thanks to Blabbermouth.
Bass sensation Rene Pape, fresh from the release of a Solo CD inspired by a German pop band, sings in "Don Giovanni" at the Met Monday
BY STACEY KORS
Candlelight reflected off dozens of disco balls at a recent CD-launch party at the Avalon dance club in downtown Manhattan. In a music video of the title track, a handsome man with almond-shaped eyes and a close-cropped goatee stared out through a sooty apartment window and sang, in German, "My heart is bleeding."
This wasn't pop, it was Pape: operatic bass René Pape (pronounced POP-uh), who at 39 is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after singers in the world. Two weeks after releasing his first solo CD, an edgy new symphonic song cycle based on the lyrics and music of a popular Industrial metal band, the versatile Pape appeared in his first major recital: a marquee-name evening of Schubert lieder with Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Matthew Polenzani and James Levine at Carnegie Hall. Pape opens Monday in his first Mozart opera at the Met, singing Leporello in its new production of "Don Giovanni."
His new CD, "Mein Herz Brennt," is a work by Torsten Rasch based on music by the Industrial metal band Rammstein. "It's not music I would listen to every day," admits Pape of the source material, "but it's very interesting - and I really liked the idea of turning Industrial metal music into contemporary orchestra music."
It's an unusual, even risky, choice for a debut solo CD. Yet, it's somehow fitting for the suave Pape, whose arresting good looks, molten voice and commanding stage presence play equally well in an opera house or a rock arena, like the one where "Mein Herz Brennt" had its Berlin premiere.
"I'm known as an opera singer," the Dresden-born bass says over cheesecake at Cafe Fiorello across from Lincoln Center, "but I also want to show my interest in other things. I'd like to do everything on CD - jazz, Broadway, Beatles - not just sing these things in the living room or the shower."
Pape has been singing professionally since he was 23. Three years later, he was the youngest bass in the long history of the Salzburg Festival to sing Sarastro in "The Magic Flute."
It wasn't until the late 1990s, however, that Pape's stentorian yet mellifluous singing began to develop an expressiveness and maturity that caused critics and audiences to pay special attention. His performance as King Marke in the Met's "Tristan und Isolde" in 1999 was an unequivocal triumph, praised for its striking combination of supreme dignity and raw emotion. Over the past few seasons he has become a Met favorite, singing everything from Wagner to Verdi, from Beethoven to Bizet.
"René's voice is just beautiful," says "Mein Herz Brennt" composer Rasch. "It goes from the finest pianissimo to the most shattering power. He has an amazing range in transmitting a certain state of mind, be it sadness, anger, joy, whatever."
Yet, Pape's success as a soloist was unexpected. As a child, he belonged to the Dresdner Kreuzchor, one of the world's oldest, finest boys' choirs - but one whose members rarely graduate to opera careers. "When I went to the high-school music conservatory," recalls Pape, a tenor at the time, "they said, 'You have an OK voice, but the highest level you will get to will be a member in a professional chorus.'"
As Pape grew, so did his voice. It also changed register, first to a baritone, then to a booming bass. He got a job in the ensemble of the Berlin Staatsoper in 1988 and was soon appearing as a guest artist on the international opera circuit.
With a voice more authoritative than its years, Pape was regularly cast as priests, fathers, gods and kings - roles usually reserved for older men. "Many critics said, 'This guy has a nice voice but is much too young to sing these roles,'" he remembers. "But I played them, with my age and with my energy. And after a while it worked, and people began to believe my interpretations."
Of course, Pape also enjoys playing younger characters, such as Don Giovanni's crafty manservant, Leporello. "I like Giovanni," says the bass, who has yet to debut in the title role, "but I also love Leporello. He has to be everybody. He has to be a friend, a servant, a stupid man and a wise man. He has to do many things, which is great. It never gets boring.
Maybe later, he will tackle Giovanni. "It's always done like that: first singing Leporello, then later on Giovanni," he says, "but really, I don't care." Pape won't say whether his debut as Don Giovanni is in the works, though with his reputation so stellar, the question isn't whether so much as when. He will make his debut in the role of Méphistophélès in Gounod's "Faust" at the Met next season, and in Vienna he will sing King Philip in his first French-language production of Verdi's "Don Carlo."
Pape plans to keep adding roles to his roster: perhaps Wotan in Wagner's "Ring" cycle or Hans Sachs in "Die Meistersinger." "Things like that will come, but you also have to wait - not just physically, but also vocally," he cautions. "You have to grow up a little."
Despite his leading-man looks, Pape doesn't mind the relative scarcity of romantic roles for basses in the operatic repertoire. "If there would be romantic leading roles, of course I'd do them," he says.
On the other hand, he adds, "the romantic roles, which are mostly sung by tenors, are usually stupid characters. Nothing against my colleagues, but in the end, everybody suffers because of the tenor. Either he dies, or his wife dies, or his love dies. So I'd rather play the fathers and the gods."
Life, however, doesn't have to imitate art.
He recalls an occasion when an interviewer asked Plácido Domingo what he thought about Pape. "He said that the tenors may get the girls onstage, but in real life the basses get them. I think that's funny.
"But you know," adds the strapping bass, who is single, "it's true."