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.
Born Joseph van Damme in Brussels on August 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 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.
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