Bass instincts Rene Pape's commitment doesn't end once he leaves the stage. Stephen Hastings interviews a singer who loves to say what he thinks as much as he hates to play politics.(Interview)(Cover Story)

"All I want is to give pleasure to the audience." Rene Pape--who has emerged as the world's most charismatic bass in the first decade of the twenty--first century--repeated this statement several times during our two-hour interview (generously lubricated with beers and grappas) at a Florentine card last December. And surely no statement could be more unquestionable in its logic for a performing artist. It came as a surprise all the same--perhaps because few opera singers have such a lucidly unpretentious vision of their mission in life, or perhaps because we tend to associate the German opera aesthetic (Pape is both Dresden-born and a leading Wagnerian) with angst rather ...