René Pape

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  René Pape, one of the world’s leading basses, received his musical education in his native city of Dresden. He made his debut while still a student in 1988 at the Berlin State Opera and has been a member of this company ever since. There, he has performed the major roles of his repertoire, such as Rocco, König Marke, König Heinrich, Pogner, Fasolt, Hunding, Sarastro, Figaro, Leporello, Don Giovanni, Philipp II, Gurnemanz and Boris Godunov.

  Internationally, he has appeared at all the major opera houses in Europe, North America and Japan including San Francisco Opera, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne, Lucerne, Munich Opera, Orange, St. Petersburg’s “White Nights Festival” as well as the Salzburg and Verbier Festivals, touring regularly with the Metropolitan New York and Berlin State Operas. Since his successful debut, he has been a welcome regular guest artist of Metropolitan Opera. There, under James Levine he has appeared in new productions of Tristan und Isolde König Marke, Fidelio Rocco, Don Giovanni Leporello and Faust Mephisto, as well as in revivals of Lohengrin König Heinrich and Die Meistersinger Pogner. It was also in New York that he sang his first Gurnemanz under Valery Gergiev. At the Lyric Opera of Chicago he has performed the roles of Pogner under Christian Thielemann, König Marke Tristan und Isolde under Semyon Bychkov, and Rocco under Christoph von Dohnanyi.

  Equally at home on the concert platform, René Pape has appeared in all major international concert halls: in Tokyo, Madrid, London, Florence, New York, Chicago, Paris, Philadelphia and Boston. He has made numerous TV appearances, including a TV-portrait for ARTE, CD and DVD recordings on the BMG, EMI, DGG, TELDEC labels, as well as performing the roles of Sarastro and Sprecher in Kenneth Branagh’s film production of The Magic Flute.

  René Pape is represented by Rayfield Allied in the UK.
  This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.

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  • Faust: Royal Opera House
    (September/October 2011)

    René Pape was simply magnificent as Mephistopheles, his vocal power, histrionic authority and sly wit putting him in the Chaliapin league.

    Daily Telegraph

    Also new is the Mephistopheles, leading German bass Rene Pape, who is too rarely in London. Hearing his majestic voice in a major role here is a great pleasure…

    Financial Times

    Pape’s Mephistopheles always offered good value – and eloquent eyebrows, too. This Devil snared his catches through mischievous underplaying.

    The Times

    Any staging of the story demands, above all, a convincing Mephistopheles and they do not come any better than the German bass René Papp who gives a truly commanding performance in the role. His huge deep voice and powerful presence conveys an impression of awesomely undeniable evil that dominates the entire work.

    Daily Express

    And the devil himself? From the moment René Pape appears, waving sulphurous smoke away from his face, his is an enticingly nonchalant malevolence, booming bass authority offset by melting head tones and many a vocal shrug.

    The Independent

    Rene Pape…the magnificence of the voice…

    The Stage

    Lording it over it all was Rene Pape’s marvellous Mephistopheles, rolling out one generous phrase after another and acting with an irresistible mischievous glint in his eye.

    MusicalCriticism.com

    He (Grigolo) forms a strong partnership with René Pape’s Méphistophélès, Grigolo acting as the yapping, snapping terrier, Pape as the Alsatian happy to do things in his own time. Pape’s resonant bass is put to good use in the role as this Méphistophélès cuts an intrinsically rough, but outwardly spruced up, figure.

    Music OMH

    When it comes to ideal casting you probably can’t get much better than René Pape as Méphistophélès …Pape’s Wagnerian instrument has a luscious “black” timbre and is perfectly smooth and even throughout the range, possessing the heft and authority required to really make an impact in this vital role… His Act III incantation “O nuit, étends sur eux ton ombre!” was sung with such noble majesty that he could have been Wotan saluting Valhalla…

    Opera Britannia

    …he was no match musically for the superb René Pape as Méphistophélès. Pape, in addition to superb stage presence, has a huge voice; he has taken the role of Wotan – Siegfried – for the Berlin State Opera and La Scala, Milan, which should give some indication as to the size of his voice. Yet it is sublimely focused, too. As with the character he portrayed, control was all; his “Le veau d’or” left one in no doubt of this. Vocal staccato is perfectly controlled.

    Seen and Heard International

    René Pape's Méphistophélès had imperious charm.

    The Observer

    René Pape had enormous fun as the charismatic devil figure; vocally he was as rich and sonorous as one could hope for. In both dramatic and vocal terms he caught the cynical, nonchalant and malevolent aspects in equal measure, and managed to be humorous and slightly scary at the same time.

    Classical

    In this Royal Opera production of Gounod’s Faust, there’s no question about who’s in charge. Not only does the devil get all the best lines, but he bosses the show from beginning to end. Clad in feathered hat, lond curly wig and reminiscent of the Laughing Cavalier, René Pape plays Mephistopheles quite superbly, alternating between mercurial bouffe comic lines and extreme sardonic nastiness. His voice was smooth and controlled and his whole presence radiated command.

    Bachtrack

  • Boris Godunov: Metropolitan Opera
    (October 2010 / March 2011)

    ...the exciting cast the Met had assembled, headed by the great German bass René Pape in the title role... We first meet Mr. Pape’s Boris at the czar’s coronation. With his towering physique and unforced charisma, Mr. Pape looks regal and imposing. Yet with his vacant stare, the haggard intensity in his face, his stringy long hair and his hulking gait, he is already bent over with guilt and doubt. Mr. Pape has vocal charisma as well, and his dark, penetrating voice is ideal for the role...his enunciation was crisp and natural. And in every language, Mr. Pape makes words matter. During the coronation there is a soul-searching moment when Boris removes his crown and voices his remorse to himself. Some great Borises have conveyed the character as beset with internalized torment. Mr. Pape’s anguish is always raw, fitful and on the surface. But the volatility is balanced by the magisterial power he conveys. Mr. Pape is riveting in Boris’s death scene, where, seemingly through sheer, body-crunching guilt, the czar has a physical breakdown and dies. The strong cast members...were all cheered, especially Mr. Pape.

    New York Times

    Many basses make Boris bigger than life; René Pape makes him life-size, also poignant and splendidly sonorous.

    Financial Times

    At the heart of the opera is Boris himself, given agonizing life by the resplendent bass René Pape, who was singing the role for the first time at the Met. With his richly beautiful voice and searing stage presence, Mr. Pape's tormented Boris always seemed to be looking behind him for the ghost of the child he killed, and by the end of the opera he was barely able to hold himself upright. This was the most poignant of murderers, one who has realized too late that human connection matters. Most heartrending were the scenes with Boris's own children, and in Act IV, as he is dying and prays desperately for their protection, the irony was unmistakable.

    Wall Street Journal

    René Pape is superb as a wrenching, troubled Boris.

    The Opera Critic

    As for Pape, there is hardly another singer alive with his power to make the scene around him look sharper and sound more intense… Pape wraps his ermine voice so tightly around the character’s psyche that singer and sovereign fuse. Boris is a Lear-like figure, intertwining majesty, age, and doubt, and Pape savors his complexities. Mussorgsky translated the irregular rhythms and veering inflections of speech into short, mercurial phrases, and Pape, instead of bellowing and rasping his way toward his death, delivers Boris’s agonies with restrained grace, illuminating his magnetism and fragility.

    New York Magazine

  • Recital Debut: 19th Century German Lieder [Brian Zeger - Piano]: Carnegie Hall
    (April 2009)

    By its nature the bass voice is better suited for melancholy music than for cheerful, celebratory works. You can find exceptions — the bass part in the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Leporello’s Catalogue Aria from “Don Giovanni,” for example — but a sepulchral growl, room-shaking power and a dark, soulful coloration are the truest hallmarks of a great bass, and composers are drawn to those qualities for the naturalness with which they evoke desolation, melancholia and terror. René Pape sang a program of 19th-century German lieder at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, his New York recital debut. René Pape has inhabited both the brighter and gloomier ends of the bass repertory on the opera stage and in orchestral performances, and although his appearance at Carnegie Hall on Saturday evening was his New York recital debut, he has also been heard here in the song repertory. He was one of four Metropolitan Opera singers who collaborated with James Levine on an evening of Schubert songs on this same stage in 2004. That night, not surprisingly, he sang the most heart-wrenching works on the program. In a way that performance was a preview of his recital on Saturday. Except for his final encore — “Some Enchanted Evening” — he sang only 19th-century German lieder of the most brooding sort, with Schubert groups surrounding Wolf’s “Drei Gedichte von Michelangelo” on the first half, and Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” after the intermission. “Aufenthalt,” which opened the first Schubert group, offered a quick reminder of the depth and power of Mr. Pape’s sound, as well as the subtlety of his interpretive style. He is not a singer who dazzles with agile changes of timbre within a song, and for the most part he chose songs that barely require that. But his singing is hardly monochromatic. If “Standchen” lacked the lilt a higher voice gives it, the balance of drama and gentleness that Mr. Pape brought to it made it seem fresh. And the dynamic fluidity that both Mr. Pape and his eloquent pianist, Brian Zeger, lavished on “Der Atlas” pointed up the anguish that drives the song, much as a similar marshalling of resources unleashed the anger that propels “Prometheus,” in Mr. Pape’s second Schubert group. For pure, soul-wrenching introspection, nothing on the program — not even “Dichterliebe” — quite matched Mr. Pape’s rendering of the Wolf “Michelangelo” songs, particularly the central meditation on mortality, “Alles endet, was entstehet.” “Dichterliebe” grapples with a more transitory kind of pain, even if the Heine poetry that Schumann set paints the vicissitudes of love in the grandest terms. Here too it was the fine gradation that Mr. Pape and Mr. Zeger applied to the music that gave Heine’s (and Schumann’s) passion flesh and blood. Mr. Pape’s sound was often at its lightest, but in songs like “Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen” and “Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet,” that gentleness had an irresistible power.

    New York Times

    On Saturday evening at Carnegie Hall, René Pape, sharing the stage with the superb pianist, Brian Zeger, made his long-anticipated recital debut. In the fourteen years since he first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, Pape has been much admired here for both his vocal and dramatic gifts. He has a powerful, flexible voice that is capable of producing a marvelous variety of colors. He sings with a beautiful and smooth vocal line throughout his considerable range. His enunciation is crystal clear. And, whether in star roles or in cameos (such as Fasolt in Das Rheingold, which I saw on Thursday), his voice illuminates the interior life of the characters he portrays. The results are often surprising (his depiction of a love-sick, emotionally vulnerable Fasolt, for example) as well as deeply affecting. In his move from the opera stage to the recital stage, Pape made full use of all of these talents in a very ambitious program. Throughout, but especially in the second half, where he was virtually an equal partner, Brian Zeger played with great sensitivity and technical skill. Zeger has an exceptionally broad range of abilities as well as responsibilities. He has a successful career as a pianist and in chamber music. He is an arts administrator, currently head of the Julliard Vocal Arts Department as well as the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artists Development Program. He is also a teacher and a writer. I am reminded a bit of an old friend’s tongue-in-cheek observation about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. "Surely, he said, there must be a Mr. Dietrich, a Mr. Fischer, and a Mr. Dieskau." Is there really only one Brian Zeger? In the first set of Schubert songs, two of the three, Aufenthalt and Der Atlas showed off the unforced power and sonorous depth of Pape’s voice. The second set was lighter in tone and in mood. Der Einsame had a sprightly playfulness but, underneath, there was the wistful sadness of the hermit sitting by the fire with only a cricket for company. Heidenröslein was sung as a mock tragedy, with beautiful vocal colors and dynamic finesse. Between the two sets of Schubert songs, were Wolf’s three songs based on poems by Michelangelo. The second of these, Alles endet, was entstehet, sung mostly in half voice, was an emotionally wrenching experience – a memento mori about the transitory nature of life, love, even memory. Nothing lasts. It reminded me of sixteenth century English poet Thomas Nashe’s In Time of Pestilence, which is probably an unfortunate comparison to be making under current circumstances. Wolf died, insane, the result of syphilis, less than a year after he wrote these songs. The second half of the program was devoted to Schumann’s Dichterliebe, a song cycle of a very different type from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, both of which tell the consistent, linear story of one character. If there is a single character in Dichterliebe, it is Schumann himself. He selected sixteen poems from the sixty-four in Heine’s Lyrisches Intermezzo and constructed a musically subtle and complex picture of love in all its aspects – with its hope and joy tinged with the possibility, even inevitability, of heartbreak and despair. This performance of Dichterliebe, one of the finest I have ever heard, was the highlight of the evening. In these songs, such as the extraordinarily tender Allnächtlich im Traume, Schumann transfigures heartbreak into something exquisite. Throughout, Pape’s enunciation, phrasing and word painting brought out the nuances of the text. He employed a wide range of dynamics, from the powerful depths of his voice in Im Rhein im heiligen Strome to the gentleness of Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen and the melting lyricism of Im wunderschönen Monat Mai. Dichterliebe is noteworthy for its extended -- and here, beautifully played -- postludes that crystallize the mood of the songs. Two lovely examples came at the end of Im Rhein im heiligen Strome, and Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen. The piano could also be a companion in despair, as in Ich hab’im Traum geweinet, where Zeger left us hanging on the last almost painfully tentative notes. Or the postlude could express a depth of emotion that the voice did not express, as in Und wüssten’s die Blumen. The long postlude of the last song, Die alten, bösen Lieder seemed to achieve the peace that eluded the poet in life. Mr. Pape is currently appearing at the Metropolitan Opera as Fasolt in Das Rheingold and Hunding in Die Walküre.

    concertonet.com

  • Tristan und Isolde: Glyndebourne Festival Opera
    (August 2007)

    The greatest performance is René Pape's King Mark, who sounds the lowest depths of grief at his betrayal by his wife and his beloved nephew.

    The Independent

    With Rene Pape repeating his magisterial King Marke...this is opera as good as it gets.

    The Guardian

    ...bass René Pape as King Marke goes a long way...generosity incarnate, a great performance.

    The Independent

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