Rene Pape - or Рене Папе as he's known in Russia - tells Vera Stepanovskaya of Art Lovers Journal he's had enough. After 20 years of solid opera, he's cutting right back.
He's booked up for the next couple of years, but after that he intends to focus more on recital work. Limiting his future opera appearances to one or two a year should leave enough spare time to catch up on his reading as well. Literature and history are his picks - it's time to develop his mind.
More here (in Russian).
Appaling! Monstrous! Outrageous! How dare he?!?!?
Well, we suppose, having heard him something like 50 times at the Met and perhaps close a couple dozen times elsewhere, we'll have to be satisfied and he does have Faust, Boris and Don Carlos coming up in New York. We'll have to see about Wotan. Bryn's the man of the moment and one wanders how benignly he'll look upon RP slotting into his spot. Hmm!!! Suppose we'll have to make our way to Milan or Berlin, and we can just imagine how readily those tickets will be available.
One can understand cutting back from 40+ to 20 opera performances (he doesn't give a number but we hope it won't be too much lower). As a history major we can appreciate his interest and War and Peace is certainly OK (well...except for that superfluous "history" harangue at the end) and Dostoevsky could be a penance for....something.
Still, this must surely mean the end for Heinrichs (now that we think of it, probably the role we've heard him in most often) and Roccos, and even in these parts he's had quite a bit more to contribute than one would have thought might be there.
Of course there's alway the chance that after a few years he'll resume a more active opera schedule and luckily (see you current CG guests Furlanetto and Salminen) he's probably got a good 20 plus years to go.
Interesting that he severed his contract with DG. He says he wants to have more freedom and I hope that means more recordings elsewhere. DG contracts for basses are not, however, in this day and age, something to be despised.
Posted by: Furst | 14 September 2009 at 12:15 AM
I always wonder why established singers continue to do much opera. Recitals pay much better and I would suspect they are easier too. You don't have to worry about pretending to act. Bartoli doesn't do any operas anymore, does she? Pape is 45. Good time to shift focus.
Posted by: Hal | 14 September 2009 at 05:03 PM