Once again, the German bass René Pape is striking awe into Metropolitan Opera audiences with his portrayal of a suffering king. He did it first in 1999, in “Tristan und Isolde,” offering so agonizingly vivid a performance as King Mark that the opera was thrown off balance. He is now singing the role of King Philip in “Don Carlo,” and his voice has become a juggernaut. It has all the required basso weight and baritonal ring, and it is also amazingly rich in feeling: you hear the King’s unfulfilled longings, his self-doubt, his cold resolve. Listen for how Pape rips away another layer of illusion each time he repeats the phrase “She does not love me” in the Study Scene, or for how he adds a tinge of political insanity to the line “Death, in my hands, becomes fecund.” There are good performances here—Patricia Racette is finely expressive as Elisabeth, and Johan Botha is forceful in the lead—but only Samuel Ramey, as the Grand Inquisitor, matches Pape’s intensity. The Met should quickly bring to town the next and potentially greatest portrait in Pape’s gallery of kings: Boris Godunov, Mussorgsky’s murderer tsar.
Critic's Notebook
Royal Blood
by Alex Ross December 18, 2006
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