René Pape

As a member of the storied Kreuzchor of his native Dresden, the bass René Pape laid the foundation for his career as a singer at an early age. He completed his studies at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden and in 1988, at the age of 24, became a member of the Berlin Staats-
oper ensemble, which remains his home company. Here it is above all the major roles of the German repertoire that he performs, especially the works of Richard Wagner. Pape is in addition a sought-after performer of Italian, French, and Russian operas and has undertaken such roles as Filippo II in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen, Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust, Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and the title role in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. Since appearing in 1991 under Georg Solti at the Salzburg Festival, he has also been known as a Mozart singer and has taken on such characters as Sarastro, Figaro, Leporello, and Don Giovanni. Pape has performed at the Bayreuth and Glyndebourne Festivals, the Royal Opera House in London, the Vienna Staatsoper, and the Opéra National de Paris and is regularly seen at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He enjoys a close association with Daniel Barenboim, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst, and the late Claudio Abbado also numbered among his partners at the podium; his most recent performance with Abbado was in 2012 in Mozart’s Requiem at LUCERNE FESTIVAL. In 2000 Pape was appointed a Berlin Kammersänger and, in 2010, a MET Mastersinger; in 2002 the magazine Musical America named him Singer of the Year, as did the magazine Opernwelt in 2006; in 2009, 2011, and 2013 he received ECHO Klassik awards for his recordings.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 3 September 1992 in Haydn’s The Creation with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Peter Schreier.

August 2014