José van Dam, an award-winning Belgian bass-baritone opera singer who created the title role in Olivier Messiaen's “Saint François d’Assise," has died at age 85, a Belgian conservatory announced Thursday.
Van Dam died Tuesday in Croatia, said Natsumi Krischer of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium. Van Dam founded its voice section in 2004 and was a master in residence there.
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Born Joseph van Damme in Brussels on Aug. 25, 1940, van Dam attended the Brussels Royal Conservatory and adopted José van Dam as his stage name when he made his opera debut in 1960 as Don Basilio in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège.
He sang at the Paris Opera for the first time two years later as Priam and the Voice of Mercury in Berlioz's “Les Troyens," His profile rose in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where Lorin Maazel was chief conductor, and with 1971 performances at the Salzburg Easter Festival as Don Pizarro in Beethoven's “Fidelio” with conductor Herbert von Karajan.
Van Dam performed Escamillo in Bizet’s “Carmen” for his debuts at Milan's Teatro alla Scala in 1972, London's Royal Opera in 1973 and New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1975, then sang the title role in Mozart's “Le Nozze di Figaro” on tour with the Paris Opera at the Met in 1976.
He was particularly acclaimed for the title roles of Verdi's “Falstaff” and “Simon Boccanegra,” Mozart's “Don Giovanni,” Berg's “Wozzeck” and Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” along with Philipp II in Verdi's “Don Carlo,” Hans Sachs in Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" and Amfortas in Wagner's “Parsifal.”
“Before taking on a new role that has interested me, I always looked carefully at the tessitura,” van Dam said during an interview with Opera magazine published in 2010. “At age 20, I was more of a bass; with the help of careful exercises, the voice stretched further at both ends, and especially at the top, I've never had any particular vocal difficulties with a role, but I've always been careful.”
Known for elegant interpretations, van Dam expressed a preference for concerts over operas during a 1981 interview.
“When I’m on the stage and I’m acting, I’m singing Figaro or Giovanni or Amfortas,” he said. “I’m not José van Dam!”
He was in the initial cast of “Saint François" at Paris in 1983 and against at the Salzburg Festival in 1988.
“Technically and interpretively impressive in his extremely long role,” critic John Rockwell wrote in The New York Times during the premiere run.
Van Dam's final opera role was in Massenet’s "Don Quichotte” at Brussels' La Monnaie in 2010.
Van Dam received 10 Grammy Award nominations and won three times, earning a vocal solo honor for a recording of Ravel songs with conductor Pierre Boulez in 1984, and best opera recording for Strauss' “Die Frau ohne Schatten” in 1992 and "Meistersinger” in 1997, both with conductor Georg Solti.
He portrayed Leporello a 1979 movie of Mozart's “Don Giovanni” directed by Joseph Losey and played an opera star named Joachim Dallayrac in “The Music Teacher,” a 1988 release that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.