RENE PAPE: Run...do not walk...

...to amazon.com or other fine site and purchase the Blue Eyed One's Gods, Kings, and Demons.

I cannot tell a lie - I downloaded this album (I paid!) from the DG site as soon as it was available in Germany, so I've been listening for a month or two. However, my car player wouldn't play the 'homemade' CD so I purchased a store version from Amazon. Rene Pape is gorgeous to look at and to listen to. I've crossed the ocean twice to hear him sing. After years of buying collections and operas so that I could hear one measly aria from him, it's a great treat to have a whole CD of Rene. Many of his iconic arias, like Ella Giamai M'amo from Don Carlo and the great King Marke aria from Tristan and Isolde are here. But the one I listen to over and over is Act II, Romance: "Na vozdusnom okeane" RUBENSTEIN: Demon. The music is as melodic as Schubert, and the singer as lyrical as the finest tenor. Great emotion pours out through his disciplined voice. If there are any sins in this CD they are ones of omission -- for example, there is no In diesen heil'gen Hallen or O Isis und Osiris, from Magic Flute -- I guess Sarastro isn't a God, King, or Demon. If you like Rene Pape, you must own at least one copy of this CD.

Postscript (11/21/08)
Hearing the 'store' version on my Sony stereo, I have a new fave from the CD -- the death scene from Boris - of course it's sung perfectly, but the drama is so real I feel like I'm listening to the opera itself being enacted. Now I'm a little bit sorry I didn't go with my first impulse to fly over and hear Mr. Pape's Boris in Dresden in December.

(crossposted at amazon.com)