January 22, 1994

Long-Distance Master

José van Dam, who sings a recital at Carnegie Hall on February 25, talks with Marylis Sevilla-Gonzaga about his three decades on the stage.

One particularly unpromising hot summer morning, while I was bracing myself for another New York City day by listening to the litany of disasters otherwise called a newscast, the announcer suddenly brightened prospects by declaring that today (August 25) was José van Dam's birthday and playing "Scintille, diamant" from Les Contes d'Hoffmann. As van Dam's voice filled the air, I was reminded of what makes his bass-baritone so distinctive -- that ray of intelligence that shines through each syllable he sings. But the announcer added something that was not true -- at least, not lately. He claimed that van Dam is a frequent guest at the Metropolitan Opera. Alas, he has been absent since the 1989/90 season.

Last June, Opera News caught up with the singer in Brussels, where he was in rehearsals for Die Meistersinger at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. Having driven in from his home some forty miles out of the city, he arrived on time and sans entourage for our interview, which took place in his sparingly but cozily furnished dressing room a few stories above stage level.

The room suited the man, who remains forthrightly simple even as he is acclaimed as one of the foremost singers of our time. At fifty-three, Van Dam stands at the peak of a remarkable career. His rich, smoothly produced tone, unmarred by thirty-three years onstage, lately has been compared to premier grand cru wine that has reached full maturity. Chocolate fanciers, including many of his compatriots, might prefer to compare it to one of those famous Belgian truffles -- perhaps a dark, cognac-flavored ganache, enrobed in flawless, bittersweet couverture. It is deep, nuanced and satisfying, even while delivering unwelcome news.

"I love New York and the Metropolitan," he quickly declares, on my asking why he has been absent for too many seasons. "But in the last few years, and I don't mean to be presumptuous, it has not been interesting for me to go there. As I have always held throughout my career, I have two possibilities when I go to sing someplace -- either there is an artistic challenge, or there is a financial reward. In New York, in recent years, there has been neither. Marseilles, Lyons, Toulouse pay two or three times the amount offered by the Met. But it's not just money, of course. If I could go to the Met for something new and interesting, I'd go."

What he has to offer New York audiences is considerable. His Met roles (Escamillo, Colline, Golaud, the Dutchman, Wozzeck, Mozart's Figaro and the Hoffmann villains) only begin to suggest the versatility of an artist who in the last four seasons alone has enthralled Brussels, Salzburg, Paris, Geneva, Lyons and Toulouse as Hans Sachs, Falstaff, Messiaen's St. Francois, Simon Boccanegra, Guillaume Tell and Massenet's Don Quichotte. Admittedly, his success in playing such characters can be attributed to that intangible gift, presence. Though not quite six feet tall, the singer onstage suggests greater height and authority; his body language, deliberately unexaggerated, effectively completes the portrayals he weaves with his voice. He endows Hoffmann's villains with a suave menace -- and his unforgettable Golaud, palpably anguished, has made many a Pelléas seem more lightweight nuisance than true protagonist.

Artistic challenge, coupled with self-knowledge, has fueled Van Dam's growth throughout his career, which started in Liége in 1960. His teacher, Frédéric Anspach, endowed him with a technique that has served him to this day, but the singer credits his instincts for the pace and scope of his repertory. In a July 1980 Opera News interview, he elaborated both on that technique and on the guidance he received during his apprenticeship of some ten years in several European houses. In Geneva he came under the tutelage of Lotfi Mansouri. At the Deutsche Oper Berlin he learned major roles while singing secondary ones. It was there that he was discovered by Herbert von Karajan, who asked him to the Salzburg Festival. He soon became one of the maestro's favorites onstage and on records, though one who could say no to roles he did not think suitable.

His association with Salzburg has continued into the Gérard Mortier regime. The festival's 1992 production of Messiaen's St. Francois d'Assise was in some respects an homage to the singer, since he had created the role for the opera's world premiere in Paris in 1983. The media were perhaps more focused on the fact that this was the first major production of the new intendant, who brought in the ever controversial Peter Sellars team to stage the work. In the event, van Dam, among other singers, triumphed over the spectacular set, with its ubiquitous TV monitors that some critics found irritating or merely irrelevant. He did find working with Sellars a stimulating experience, saying, "I am convinced that Sellars is a big talent... and a really modern artist. He does not try to be modern, he is modern. I think what he does to Mozart's works, translating them to a different time period, makes them more interesting for young people who don't know much about opera. It may not mean much to them that Figaro is the servant of this Count and this Countess, but if you say Figaro is a guy like you and the Count a guy like someone you know, then perhaps they can make a connection to their own lives. And for St. Francois, Sellars came so well prepared. He studied the music, the life of St. Francis -- and he was so enthusiastic as well as respectful. What is important is that the director respects the music even as he tries to find a new way to present the work."

When prodded, the singer reluctantly recounts an experience with a production of Die Meistersinger at Paris' Théâtre du Châtelet that was not nearly so pleasant. The director, Claude Régy, an otherwise respected man of the theater, banished all reference to Nuremberg or any semblance of comedy in the work, which he seemed to have conceived of as a "hymn for the dead -- the Masters were dressed as monks, and Sachs was some sort of magician." The performers were asked to gesticulate in slow motion in sepulchral gloom. Van Dam was prevented from walking out only by his own professionalism -- he says four or five other singers would have fled if he left.

He prefers directors with a light touch -- those who can bring new, subtle changes to an established work without doing harm to the composer's intention. Kurt Horres, who staged Die Meistersinger for the Monnaie, is obviously such a director. Horres and designer Andreas Reinhardt abstracted the essential ideas of church, town and festival grounds and put the cast into vaguely mid-nineteenth-century dress. But aside from slanting the focus to the Sachs­Beckmesser conflict (somewhat relegating the young lovers to the background), the director left Wagner's comedy to work its own magic. It is a production tailored to Van Dam's thoughtful, low-key interpretation, a foil to Dale Duesing's hyperactive and endearingly eccentric Beckmesser. Van Dam has a particular fondness for the role, perhaps because it reflects his personal character. He points to Sachs' humanity, which he equates with intelligence and kindness. "For me, and I am not a Wagner fan -- I don't make my prayers to Bayreuth -- this is the best work of Wagner, because it has humor, love, sadness and a wealth of characters, young people, like Eva and Walther, contrasted with the older Mastersingers. And it has powerful music throughout."

Van Dam is at that point in his career when he is beginning to drop certain roles while contemplating the addition of others. He said farewell to Mozart's Figaro in 1992: "For me Figaro is a young man, when you see him in Barbiere, he is maybe twenty-five. Nozze is only four years later -- Figaro is thirty, perhaps forty, but not fifty. When I play a role, I must feel it inside. Escamillo and Figaro are young men -- and there are plenty of younger singers for them. I have enough to do -- with Hans Sachs, Falstaff, the Dutchman -- I don't think it is necessary to sing everything."

As for new roles, he recently essayed the title part in Lully's Roland at Paris' Théâtre des Champs Élysées, in a production directed by Gilbert Deflo and led by René Jacobs. He is finally getting around to Scarpia in Tosca, which he sings for the first time in Lausanne in March, and is studying Ivan Khovansky for a Monnaie staging of Khovanshchina. Then there is the question of Wotan, which he has been urged to undertake numerous times during his career. "Solti asked me for Bayreuth, Friedrich for Berlin, and of course Mortier for the Monnaie. I came close to doing the recording with Dohnányi and the Cleveland Orchestra, but I told him I didn't have the time to do all the Wotans, so I quite understand that he chose to do it with another singer. And most recently I was asked by Nicolas Joel to do it for Toulouse, but I think I'll refuse. There is something in Wotan that disturbs me, and unless I can resolve that, I don't feel I can do the role. But perhaps in the right production..."

In the coming years van Dam would like to do more recitals and fewer operas. Indeed the singer's calendar now shows a growing number of solo evenings. Before coming to New York for his Carnegie Hall date, he will have sung concerts in Brussels (a benefit for children with AIDS), Cologne, Nantes, Athens (Schubert's Winterreise) and Paris. Dates also are set for Venice, Catania, Montreux and Buenos Aires. He is making time to explore the song repertory -- learning Schumann's Dichterliebe and recording all the Duparc songs. Fortunately for his fans, this album will be just the latest in a long list, other recent additions to which are Gounod's Faust, Enesco's Oedipe and Massenet's Don Quichotte, all for EMI France, plus Pelléas et Mélisande for DG.

Though they are poor substitutes for live performance, recordings do offer the opportunity to listen repeatedly to what makes an artist unique. In an opera world plagued with vocal blandness and shallow posturing, Van Dam stands apart for imparting color and flavor to whatever he sings. His command of French, Italian and German allows him to marry words to music with distinctive intelligence and taste. This he attributes to his character, saying, "When I compare my singing to Chaliapin's -- and Chaliapin is very interesting -- I realize that in trying to keep the musical line, I sometimes lose some dramatic intensity. But of course Chaliapin took more liberties with the music. So it's a choice, and I make the choice for keeping faithful to the music. I just made a recording of fourteen Italian arias. Perhaps it is not dramatic enough, but it may be interesting for people to hear the notes as written by the composers."

Like the character he portrayed in the lyrically beautiful 1988 film Le Maïtre de Musique, released in the U.S. in 1989 as The Music Teacher, van Dam intends to spend his later years teaching. But unlike the teacher in the film, who took only two pupils, he is planning with a few of his colleagues to open a school in Marseilles. (Van Dam until quite recently maintained a home in nearby St.-Rémy-de-Provence and appeared frequently at the summer festivals in Aix and Orange. His Provencal property since has been sold, but he plans to buy another pied-a-terre in France, a bit further north, where his wife finds the weather more temperate.) The school he is thinking of would fill the gap between the conservatory and the professional stage, a sort of year-long master class. He plans to invite such artists as Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Alfredo Kraus, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Leonie Rysanek and Elisabeth Soderstrpm to teach classes, but finding the right pupils may prove more problematic. Van Dam sets high standards for those he will take under his wing, and applicants would be well advised to view The Music Teacher at least once to learn what will be expected of them.

The bass-baritone deplores the current confusion between a teacher for technique and a teacher for interpretation. Though admitting one person could be both, he observes that there are not enough instructors for the basics of singing. "I say this again and again, the basis for good singing is the breath -- supported by pressure from the diaphragm. You build the sound from down there, it comes up like a rough diamond, then you polish it with your lips and mouth. It's quite a bit more complicated than that, of course, but all the work starts with the diaphragm."

So a student must come to auditions with a good grasp of technique. But that won't suffice. A strong physique and willingness to work also are required. Van Dam finds today's youth much too soft. The couch-potato syndrome apparently has spread to Europe, to the detriment of sports, and he contends that a strong body is a necessity for an enduring career. He himself keeps in enviable shape through tennis, cycling and swimming. And he watches what he eats, being specially careful after a performance, when he observes that singers tend to overeat. "You are tired and hungry, so you eat and drink too much, and then you sleep. It all turns to fat." Instead, he counsels eating lightly about two hours before a performance and not eating at all afterward.

But perhaps the quality he finds most lacking in young singers is patience. "They are in too much of a hurry to sing the big roles. Now if you tell young people they must study up to six years, then sing for about ten years without making a big name, they say,'No, it's too difficult, I won't do this.' When I was in Geneva singing small roles in Wozzeck and Meistersinger, I said to myself, 'Someday I will sing those [major] roles, but not at twenty-five.' You can do it, but it's dangerous -- you could end up finished at thirty."

We are fortunate that van Dam took care not to be finished so soon. The Fates and general directors willing, we can look forward to many more years of performance. And those gifted with enough talent and perseverance may look forward to the privilege of spending a year with the artist -- in the capital of Provence.