WELSH baritone Wyn Pencarreg has returned to English Touring Opera after a "bit of a gap".

"It's been over 20 years," he says. "I worked for them at the beginning of my career, playing Figaro in The Marriage Of Figaro and Manon Lescaut in Massenet's Manon, and I've been busy working for other companies since then but when this opportunity to play Papageno arose, I grabbed it."

Wyn will be appearing as Papageno, the clumsy bird catcher, in ETO's production of Mozart's comic opera The Magic Flute at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday night, as well as in ETO's new staging of Benjamin Britten's Paul Bunyan the following night.

"I haven't done Papageno before; but it was always on my list and this is my chance," says Wyn. "I expressed an interest through my agent, and James Conway [ETO's artistic director] came to see me in The Firework-Maker's Daughter, a new work for children by David Bruce, at the Royal Opera House, as you could see the basic ingredients for Papageno in my role as the widowed firework maker."

He has loved playing someone so loveable in The Magic Flute. "He's very naive and comical character, who's dying to find a girlfriend, so he can be played at any age and at any stage of your career," says Wyn. "I'm playing him middle-aged as I'm 45, though he's a bit of a child really."

What makes Papageno so appealing is that naivety.

"He's a bird watcher who's lived a lonely life in the forest, so he doesn't know about the bad things in life," says Wyn. "I see a lot of myself in him; not that I'm naive but he likes the comforts of life, always wondering where he'll get his next meal or drink."

Wyn cut his operatic teeth on Mozart at Glyndebourne and is enjoying returning to Mozart as an experienced singer. He has sung "quite a bit" of Britten too; indeed his first professional role after college was in Britten's Death In Venice, followed by a chorus role in Peter Grimes, both at Glyndebourne.

This season he is appearing in Paul Bunyan, Britten's humorous collaboration with poet W. H. Auden, for the first time.

"That's mainly because it's rarely performed," he says. "It was conceived for Broadway after Britten and Auden had gone to America to get away from the war, and it was written as a cross between a musical and a light opera, but with folk music, a blues number, hymns and some serious music that pre-echoed Britten's later works."

Wyn plays Hel Helson, the Swedish foreman of a community of lumberjacks on the American frontier. "It's not easy to research because the character's not that well developed," he says. "Let's just say, Hel is employed for his brawn, not his brain."

English Touring Opera presents Mozart's The Magic Flute, Tuesday, and Britten's Paul Bunyan, Wednesday, at York TheatreRoyal; both start at 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk