Tribute to José van Dam

From Leporello to Figaro

When José van Dam made his debut at La Monnaie, his career was already spanning more than ten years. From his first steps on stage at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie in 1960, where he sang Don Basilio in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, to his tenure at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under Lorin Maazel, he had already dazzled the Opéra de Paris, the Royal Opera House in London and La Scala in Milan with his inimitable timbre, thanks in particular to his famous Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen. It was first as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, another of his most acclaimed roles, that he made his name in his home city in 1971, before taking on the title role five years later in the same production directed by Jean-Marc Landier.

In the 1980s, La Monnaie became José van Dam’s second home. During his tenure as General and Artistic Director of the Brussels institution, Gérard Mortier worked with the young conductor Sylvain Cambreling, whom he appointed Music Director, to offer audiences a bold programme of avant-garde stage productions. “At the time,” recalls Sylvain Cambreling, “José had a very international career. He had just turned 40. And in our first conversations with him, he made it clear to Gérard Mortier that he would be very happy to sing at La Monnaie a lot. He used to say that he felt at home here. We asked him what roles might interest him over the next ten years. And that’s how a very fruitful collaboration began. When Gérard and I were planning a season, we always thought in terms of dramaturgy: What production? Why this production? Why this production now? Who will direct it? Who will sing which character? This importance given to directors was new. But José never turned away. I think this enabled him to discover in a different way what he instinctively felt when he took on each role. In 1981, for the first Don Carlo (Verdi) of his tenure, Mortier had the stroke of genius to bring together the two great Belgian voices of the time on stage: José van Dam as Philippe II and Jules Bastin as Grande Inquisitore. It was magnificent.”

The decade was marked by numerous role debuts, such as Simon Boccanegra in Verdi’s opera of the same name in 1982. A few years earlier, the conductor Claudio Abbado had made a now legendary recording of the work with José van Dam as Paolo Albiani. By his own admission, the bass-baritone didn’t always have the voice for his roles, yet, “he was so skilful, the colour of his voice was so beautiful throughout the tessitura, that even with his limitations, in the high notes of Boccanegra for example, you couldn’t help but be seduced,” explains Sylvain Cambreling. “For him, as for me, it was an encounter with this opera and this role. In a way, it made our relationship easier. I have very fond memories of this production by Pierre Constant. It was truly a revelation. There’s something very special about this Verdi opera. The sense of the sea is ubiquitous, as is a certain darkness, even on the brightest pages. And José was able to adapt his voice with great ease, giving it more or less sunshine, more or less shade, with perfect legato.”

In Brussels, he also sang the three major Wagnerian roles that brought him international acclaim: the Holländer in Der fliegende Holländer in 1984, which he also recorded with Herbert von Karajan; Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1985, which he described as “Wagner’s most beautiful character in his best opera,” immortalised in a recording with Georg Solti; and Amfortas in Parsifal in 1989. “This is one of the finest Amfortases I’ve ever had the pleasure of conducting,” Sylvain Cambreling emphasises. “His voice could express an enormous range of feelings with great depth and ambiguity, with an almost naive, pure sensitivity. There was never any façade with José. In Parsifal, he managed to convey Amfortas's immense pain and doubts. It was overwhelming.”

During the major renovation works of the Mortier era, José van Dam sang only once for La Monnaie, relocated to the Cirque Royal, one of the most outstanding roles in his entire repertoire: the four antagonists in Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann in the Oeser version, the first recording of which he sang in 1988 with Sylvain Cambreling and the Orchestre Symphonique de la Monnaie, still considered to be one of the most accomplished versions of the work. In an interview for La Monnaie, nearly three decades later, the bass-baritone spoke with disarming simplicity about his approach to these four demanding roles: “Being a devil is easy. He knows all Hoffmann’s faults and qualities, and has no trouble piercing the souls of his victim. Perhaps that’s part of the artist’s role too?”

It came as no surprise when Gérard Mortier and Sylvain Cambreling decided to entrust José van Dam with the title role in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro for their farewell at La Monnaie in 1991, a character he played more than 400 times throughout his career.

Old and new

In 1992, when composer Bernard Foccroulle took over the reins of La Monnaie for a tenure that was to run until 2007, continuing to offer roles to José van Dam was “an obvious choice. He was the greatest Belgian singer of his generation, with an international career at the highest level. I still remember the first time I heard him sing. I can even tell you that my wife and I were in the third balcony at a performance of Don Carlo where he was singing the role of Philip II. It was memorable. From 1992 onwards, I got to know him professionally and then as a friend. To my knowledge, he is the only artist to have sung at La Monnaie every year, sometimes several times in the same season, for a quarter of a century. When I was planning a season, we’d discuss what he’d like to do, the roles he hadn’t yet sung or that he wanted to reprise in new productions. He was a leading figure in the company, a figure of harmony and great collegial spirit. He was never anything but friendly and professional with all his colleagues and very encouraging towards young people.”

In 1999, José van Dam reprised one of his most emblematic roles at La Monnaie, Golaud in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in Herbert Wernicke’s production. His interpretation was highly praised by the press, which saw him as the Golaud of the century: “Imposing and tough, as good in his determination and in his regret, he becomes our point of reference as if, in this world of unreality, he embodied the only normal human. This is perhaps a reflection of his flawless diction, always supporting committed dramatic expression, and served by a timbre of sumptuous warmth.” (Serge Martin, Le Soir). This impression was shared by Bernard Foccroulle, who evoked “the feeling that he was Golaud. It was in his voice. It seemed that he was the role’s creator.”

This is, of course, partly due to his mastery and love of the French language in a repertoire he continued to perfect on stage, in recitals and on recordings, as demonstrated by a production of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust in 2002, in which the Belgian bass-baritone shared the bill with a young Jonas Kaufmann and the soprano Susan Graham. “It was truly a moment of the highest vocal and musical quality,” emphasises Bernard Foccroulle. “The occasion was special because it was one of the last productions conducted at La Monnaie by Antonio Pappano, with whom José had become friends. In 2000, they also made a magnificent Falstaff together, directed by Willy Decker. He loved singing this role because he loved the humour of it. As an artist, he had a perfect balance between gravity, depth and lightness. His tone was instantly recognisable. If we try to describe a voice in visual terms like a pyramid, he had a very rich sound colour in all the harmonics, based on solid technical foundations and an impeccable legato. Without ever losing the clarity of the text. You could understand every word he sang. In French, Italian, German and even Russian. I have very fond memories of the Boris Godunov we did with Klaus Michael Grüber and Kazushi Ono in 2006 for example.”

This production marks one of his last major roles at La Monnaie. In the meantime, he was celebrated in the cinema with Gérard Corbiaux’s Le Maître de musique, nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1989, he was made a Baron by King Albert II in 1998, and he became the initiator and Master-in-Residence of the singing section at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in 2004. But he never became a ‘star’ - a word and an attitude he didn’t like at all. “He had a very fraternal relationship with all the staff at La Monnaie,” says Bernard Foccroulle. “In the early 2000s, the stage technicians gave him a prop as a sign of their appreciation. It was a way of telling him that they considered him one of their own. I think that really touched him.”

Farewell

“When I started my career at La Monnaie, José was contemplating the end of his own career,” recalls Peter de Caluwe, general and artistic director of the Brussels opera house from 2007 to 2025. “I think I had heard everything he had done in Brussels. I had already had some contacts with him during my time at La Monnaie during the Mortier era and then when I was working in Amsterdam. And I remember very well that at the beginning of my first term, I thought about who I absolutely wanted to continue working with. So Kazushi Ono first of all. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Philippe Boesmans, of course. And José Van Dam, naturally.”

In 2008, at the age of 68, the bass-baritone made his debut as Fra Melitone in Verdi's La forza del destino, a brief but interesting role that fit his voice perfectly. “I remember his entrance in this production. There was a door with a small window. And José's face simply appeared in that small window. It was really typical of his persona. So simple, yet just right. During our discussions at the time, he told me that at a certain age, he was going to stop.” Two years later, in 2010, he bid farewell to the opera stage in Brussels by playing Don Quichotte in Jules Massenet's eponymous opera, directed by Laurent Pelly, a production he considered one of the most beautiful he was ever involved in. He confided that he preferred people to say, “it’s a pity that van Dam no longer sings, rather than it’s a pity that he continues to sing.”

“In a way, the role of Don Quichotte was the ideal choice for his farewell,” explains Peter de Caluwe. “The character's death is so calm, so peaceful. He fades away like a candle. It's beautiful. And I think José really liked his naivety, which Laurent Pelly captured very poetically in a world of paper and books. It was Don Quichotte's library. There was a lot of anticipation surrounding the production. The event was broadcast live on several channels, Queen Fabiola was in the audience... But there was never the slightest concern backstage, because José was still in superb vocal form. I almost felt a little uncomfortable saying that it was his farewell, such was the quality of his performance. But what set José van Dam apart, beyond his voice, was the man himself. He was a singer full of empathy and humanity. And this last Don Quichotte was a wonderful example of that...”

To evoke the career of José van Dam is to trace back 40 years of the history of an opera house eternally marked by his imprint — his opera house. On a more personal note, talking about him has also been a difficult exercise for me, the author of this article, given the extent to which he played a part in fostering my love of opera. May the echo of his voice resonate as long as possible in the heart of Brussels and in my own.