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 this month to the Metropolitan Opera’s family-friendly, gently abbreviated holiday presentation.
Chen has lived with the character for quite some time. “I started to sing Sarastro when I was at the conservatory in China,” he said over Zoom recently from Atlanta. “Back then, I tried to sing him big. ‘Why do you sing him like that?’ my teacher asked me. ‘Because he’s the god of the sun!,’ I said. And my teacher said, ‘Instead of singing like the god of the sun, sing like the son of the sun, or the grandson! You’ll ruin your voice. It doesn’t resonate when you push!’ So I tried to make my voice light, without the resonance of the chest cavity, and that was no good, either. Only when I graduated and started to work in the opera house did I really begin to understand.”
