Mozart and Wagner roles occupy René Pape, "the world’s most charismatic bass", during Met Opera Tour in Japan and all summer in Salzburg

Pape reprises the role that made him internationally famous – the wise Sarastro in The Magic Flute – during Mozart year at the Salzburg Festival

Even wider international fame comes next season with Kenneth Branagh’s film of The Magic Flute, slated to screen at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival

Bass René Pape – now in Japan with the Metropolitan Opera – recently finished a month-long stint at the end of the Met's 2005-06 season in New York, in which his final notes presaged the 2006-07 season. In a salute to outgoing Met chief, Joe Volpe, Pape sang King Philip's heart-wrenching aria from Verdi's Don Carlo in the evening-long program televised in June on PBS.  He'll sing the full role at the Met for the first time next season, beginning on November 30.  In Japan, Mr. Pape will sing both Leporello in Don Giovanni and Hunding in Die Walküre – a role he has not yet performed for American audiences, who will have to wait a few years to hear it.

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During his spring season in New York, Mr. Pape also appeared with the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in an afternoon of arias.  The New York Sun's critic wrote: "As soon as this consummate artist opened his mouth to deliver a splendid 'list aria' from Mozart's "Don Giovanni," everyone in that audience realized that this is what a great singer should sound like - bold, resonant, powerful, flexible, dexterous, commanding."

While Pape's reviews are uniformly raves, he does not rest on his laurels: after returning home to Europe from Japan, he sings in concert at Valery Gergiev's St. Petersburg "White Nights Festival" (Act II of Verdi's Don Carlo), followed by a concert Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in Granada, Spain, with Daniel Barenboim.

The Salzburg Festival's presentation of all 22 operas by Mozart during the celebration of the composer's 250th birthday has been earning headlines all year.  It would not be complete without Pape's Sarastro in The Magic Flute, the role that brought him international fame. (It was in 1995 that Sir Georg Solti invited the bass to be the youngest Sarastro in Salzburg history; Pape repeated the role of the wise old man there in 1997, 2002 and 2005.

His performance on Claudio Abbado's brand-new recording was recently described as "enigmatic and refined" by Bloomberg.)

view René Pape's discography

Salzburg's new Pierre Audi production will be conducted by Riccardo Muti, the artist's first foray into the work and his signal return to Salzburg after a long absence. Pape will also participate in two different Mozart concerts in Salzburg with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Harding (July 30) and Mr. Muti (August 6).

After the briefest of summer breaks, Pape returns on September 9 to his home company, Berlin's State Opera Unter den Linden.  There he reprises a supremely difficult role he sang for the first time in his career only last December: Mussorgsky's troubled czar, Boris Godunov.

"From the very start, René Pape seemed to have dragged himself up onto the Czar's throne – as torturer and victim alike," wrote Klaus Geitel in Berlin's Morgenpost, continuing: "He sings literally captivatingly: he uses his mellifluous bass for truly majestic singing,". The distinguished Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's critic wrote: "The most sensational part of the production was the performance as Boris by René Pape … the greatest operatic bass in the world."  The Berlin State Opera production, presented last winter, received very mixed reviews, but Pape's performance was uniformly praised.  He will give five performances in the Berlin revival with Daniel Barenboim.

Since Mr. Pape's skill as an actor is praised as enthusiastically as his singing, his participation in a new English-language film of Mozart's Magic Flute (still in production) will give broader audiences a chance to see what critics have been writing about for the last dozen years. Kenneth Branagh directs, and the English version of the original libretto was written by Stephen Fry.  In the film – set during World War I – Pape portrays not only Sarastro, the linchpin of the story (who is portrayed first by others as evil, and turns out to be good), but also the Speaker. The Branagh film will be premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

René Pape's New York performances in next November's Met revival of Verdi's Don Carlo will be followed by his first Metropolitan Opera Sarastro. He sang the small part of the Speaker in Zauberflöte two seasons ago, so finally New York audiences will witness his return, full circle, to that beautiful role that signaled the arrival of an enormous new talent back in Salzburg in 1995.

René Pape's summer 2006 engagements: