In opera, there’s no passport like a voice that shocks listeners to attention. Born 43 years ago in the high steppes of Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia—a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Russian border—the Chinese bass Peixin Chen sings in primordial tones that set the whole hall and the listener’s rib cage humming. Right now, his rainmaker role is the righteous ruler Sarastro in Mozart’s Masonic fairy tale The Magic Flute. From the Atlanta Opera in November, Chen’s Sarastro proceeds to the Metropolitan Opera’s family-friendly, gently abbreviated holiday presentation. He will alternate with the American bass Soloman Howard as the slaveholder and male supremacist with the kidnapping of an under-age princess to answer for. Even so, the music is the music, and audiences accept that it speaks to their better angels. —Matthew Gurewitsch