René Pape returns to New York for only four performances

Pape sings his first Banquo in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera on May 9 – his 18th role with the company – and gives hints of his Boris Godunov in an all-Mussorgsky concert with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on May 18

Coming directly to New York from performances as Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Berlin, René Pape plunges into the Verdi tragedy of Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera, portraying the doomed Banquo for the first time with the company on May 9 under James Levine. Astonishingly, Banquo is Pape’s eighteenth role at the Met since his house debut in 1995.

In addition to singing three performances as Banquo, Pape appears with the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on May 18, under Valery Gergiev, in an all-Mussorgsky program. He’ll give the New York audience its first taste of his Boris Godunov, singing Boris’s monologue after the complete song-cycle Songs and Dances of Death.

Mr. Pape gave his first performances as Boris Godunov with his home company, the Berlin Staatsoper “Unter den Linden”, under its music director, Daniel Barenboim, in December 2005. Musical America’s Berlin correspondent wrote “René Pape in the title role adds yet another vocal and dramatic triumph to his already long list.” And Germany’s influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put it bluntly too: “The most sensational part of the production was the performance as Boris by René Pape … the greatest operatic bass in the world.”

René Pape most recently sang Mussorgsky’s 20-minute cycle Songs and Dances of Death in February in Hamburg, Germany – a performance described by one critic as “black, powerful, superb”. The four songs of the cycle – Lullaby, Serenade, Trepak, and The Field Marshall – are the diametric opposite of the composer’s “Nursery” cycle, more often sung by women, although the Songs and Dances of Death have been addressed by such dramatic divas as Galina Vishnevskaya, Jennie Tourel, and Netania Davrath.