By MATTHEW GUREWITSCH [New York Times, 23 April 2006]

THE meeting place was a restaurant popular with performers, tucked away in a middle-class residential area handy to several theaters, unknown to the fashionable set. The German bass René Pape was reading reviews of a new production of Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" at the Staatsoper. At the premiere, two nights before, he had made his debut in the title role of the conscience-stricken czar.