Spring 1997

José van Dam: 140 roles, pleased with 5 of them

by Richard Fairman

There was a thud, as a package dropped through the letterbox. Forlane, one of the record companies José van Dam is working with most regularly these days, had offered to post an up-to-date discography together with some biographical details. It made a weighty delivery. Van Dam has never been exclusive to any one record company but that has not hindered him from building up a large total of recordings. "It's about 130 or 140", he says, and thinks for a moment. "I suppose there are maybe five which please me."

This is neither fanatical perfection nor false modesty. Van Dam is an unassuming and quietly in prsin in man off-stage. It is clear in talking to him that he is never satisfied with easy answers but wants to look beyond the obvious -- to the meaning that lies beneath the surface of the music, to the real person under the skin of an operatic character. In order to deepen his understanding, he will study the play on which the opera was based or compare characters and situations in one opera with those in another. As an interpreter, he makes sure his operatic portrayals are always growing and deepening. No wonder he is not 100 per cent satisfied with everything he has recorded.

There is a lot to choose from. Van Dam's career has brought him in collaboration with some of the most prolific recording artists of the last 25 years. Reading through his discography, one is struck by how often the name of Herbert von Karajan occurs on the list. Among the operas they recorded together are Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute, a series of Verdi, including Aida, Don Carlo, Otello (as Lodovico) and the Requiem, together with Fidelio, Carmen, Pelléas et Mélisande, Salome, and a prestigious pair of Wagner sets, Der fliegende Holländer and Parsifal.

"It was a very good relationship," van Dam confirms. "A lot of people did not know the real Karajan. Perhaps you could even say there was nobody who truly knew him, but I do think that those who worked with him came to have a better understanding of Karajan the man than the audience, who only saw his public persona. The image was part of the problem. Alright, he had a boat, a plane, and other status symbols, and he was rich. But he was a complicated man and -- what was more -- a man with many complexes. I remember being struck by how shy he was. At one stage rehearsal for Figaro in Salzburg, he needed to speak to me, but came right over to whisper in my ear what he wanted.

"Then, when he loved you musically, everything changed. He let you do what you wanted. I remember a Verdi Requiem in Vienna with a marvelous quartet -- Freni, Ludwig, and Pavarotti, with myself -- when at the words 'Oro supplex et acclinis' in the bass solo, he stopped conducting and left me to sing alone with the orchestra. Afterwards, he said quietly to me, 'Bravo, van Dam!' The danger with Karajan was that once he decided he liked you, he asked to have you for everything. People used to say, 'You can’t refuse Karajan.' But I felt that some singers were saying yes to parts that weren't right for their voices. For example, he wanted me for Telramund and Pizarro, but I refused, because I don't think those roles were for me. I also declined Sarastro on stage, as it was too low for me in the theatre, although I did make the recording. Karajan said he heard my voice in the role. He wanted a real legato and told me, 'You will make a noble Sarastro, not the kind of Sarastro we hear in Germany who has a beer in one hand and a sausage in the other'."

Together with singers like Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Mirella Freni, Agnes Baltsa and Piero Cappuccilli, van Dam was part of what one might call the conductor's second generation of soloists. In his later years Karajan went back to record again some of the operas he had done before, often in the Legge era for EMI. For example, van Dam features in Karajan's second recordings of Le nozze di Figaro and The Magic Flute, Aida, and the Verdi Requiem. But he believes that, in general, Karajan's best recordings were the first ones. "I think he probably felt more urgency when he was recording an opera for the first time. Also, he slowed down as he got older. At the time when I was singing Wozzeck here in London and at the Metropolitan in New York, I said to him that I should like to record that with him, but his answer was, 'It's too late. I prefer to do operas that I have done before and do them better.' In any case he thought I was too calm to be his Wozzeck. He wanted somebody wracked with intensity. As he put it, 'I need a baritone Jon Vickers'."

Alongside the recordings with Karajan is one other major area of activity: the great French operatic tradition. Van Dam has risen to become the senior French-speaking baritone in this repertoire, including among his recordings operas ranging from Lully's Alceste and Rameau's Dardanus to Magnard's Guercoeur and Massiaen's Saint François d'Assise, by way of no less than four complete sets of Bizet's Carmen. Escamillo, he observes with an air of disappointment, for a long time seemed to be the only role he was ever asked to sing at Covent Garden.

He has a clear view of where his place lies, both as to his voice-type and within the grand line of Francophone baritones. "First, I am Belgian, and my teacher was Belgian, too. My technique isn't French, insofar as native French people sing clearly with open vowels. I would say it is more Italian, or at least Mediterranean. In Belgium there is a complex mix of influences, part Italian, part German, part French, on vocal technique. But I do love French music and I think I lean towards a French style musically."

He runs though the names of famous French-speaking baritones of the past and suggests that there are basically two branches to the family tree. On one side are the singers who have specialized in mélodies, from Panzera, through Bernac to Souzay; while on the other side are the heavier-voiced, operatic baritones, of whom Gabriel Bacquier was the most important example after the war. "I am more in the Bacquier line, as my operatic roles might suggest. Today, following in the line of Bernac and Souzay, the principal artist of the other school is probably Francois le Roux. In my view, that style of singing mélodies involved not only lightness of voice, but also some superficiality. I prefer French songs to be sing with more body to the tone. For example, when I am singing Duparc or Ravel's Don Quichotte songs, I don't want to sound as if I'm on the tips of my toes. After all, composers like Duparc and Ravel wrote very much in the Germanic style."

The difficult question is where the next generation on the family tree will come from. French singers, although more visible on the international scene than 20 years ago, have made less headway in the central operatic repertory than in early music, where there is plenty of activity thanks to conductors like René Jacobs, Marc Minkowski and William Christie. Van Dam is only moderately optimistic. "Young people today are not prepared to work and in our profession the beginning is very hard. It isn't possible to get your diploma and then start work, as a doctor or a lawyer does. Once a singer leaves college that is only the first step in trying to build a career. Then years can easily elapse before anybody in the profession starts to talk about you.

"At the moment there are more singers from America and Australia -- what we term the Anglo-Saxon school -- than there are from Europe, which I think is regrettable. The European tradition has language at its roots, which is essential for the main Italian and German operatic repertoire, and that is something that must not be lost. People say that the reason why American singers are so successful is the teachers they have over there, but I am not so sure. I have the feeling that the American school of singers which is so dominant at the moment had its foundation in the late 1930s, when a generation of musicians from Europe went to America and started teaching there. Now they are starting to come back again, so perhaps the position may reverse over the next decade or two."

Looking into his own future, van Dam has a healthy supply of recordings for release. A new Meistersinger in which he sings Sachs, recorded live under Solti in Chicago, has just been released by Decca. He is also looking forward to a disc of French songs with orchestra for Forlane (due to be released later this year), the company which has produced a prestigious series of almost a dozen solo recitals with him already; this next one will include Berlioz' Nuits d'été, which van Dam is quick to point out was written to texts more suitable for a man than a woman. Then there will be Gianni Schicchi in a complete Il trittico under Pappano for EMI, and in 1998 his first Scarpia in a Tosca to be conducted by Ozawa.

Before he goes, there has to be one last question. He said there were only five recordings which he liked, but he didn't say which they were. There was a long pause, and he didn't sound very definite about the answer: "I think one would have to be Pelléas for Karajan and then" -- another long pause -- "Parsifal, also for Karajan." If there are three more, they do not get a mention. "You see," he sighs, "it's like recording my song recitals. I always think the last one is the best. But then every time I hear them, I like them less and less!"