This recording of the opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue by Paul Dukas was staged at the Liceu in Barcelona in 2011, with Claus Guth as director, Stéphane Denève as conductor and José van Dam and Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet in the leading roles.
This May 2010 production of Massenet's 1910 opera "Don Quichotte" marked the opera's centenary and also Jose Van Dam's operatic farewell at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels. It is beautiful in every way--vocally, scenically, sonically, and visually--and a worthy record of Van Dam's farewell. Van Dam is just shy of 70 in this production, but you would never guess it from his singing or stage movements--a consummate artist. His is a noble portrayal and deeply moving. The Act V death scene is a model of beautiful singing and acting.
L'Opéra National de Paris' production of L'Amour des Trois Oranges must certainly be one of the most elaborate operatic presentations. It has a cast of gazillions, characters who fly, jugglers, fire-eaters, remarkably elaborate costumes, amazingly realistic props (those five-foot oranges are convincingly juicy and edible looking), a huge set, fireworks, and so on. In fact, at times, it looks more like a Cirque de Soleil show than something you'd see in an opera house. Director Gilbert Deflo's conception and William Orlandi's costumes and sets are rooted in commedia dell'arte, but the production is thoroughly eclectic, with allusions to a wonderfully weird assortment of styles and periods.
Late 19th-century Paris, home to Louise, her traditional working-class parents and her bohemian artist lover Julien. An opera about the tension between Louise's responsibility to her parents and her opportunity to break free with Julien.
"Man of the Mancha" tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Television broadcast of the Liège production in French with German subtitles.
In 1992, Olivier Messiaen's epic opera "Saint François d'Assise" was brought to the Salzburg Festival in a staging by Peter Sellars. The distinct visual appearance that Sellars lent to the opera, where video monitors with powerful images are used as a sort of high-tech metaphor for a cathedral's stained glass, drew critical acclaim and is still talked about as a watershed moment in opera to this day. This film here is a 75-minute documentary on the 1992 staging. Jean-Pierre Gorin filmed Sellars, baritone José van Dam (St. Francis) soprano Dawn Upshaw (The Angel), and the LA Philharmonic and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen as they rehearsed for the big day. There are interviews with these artists, though Sellars gets most of the screen time. The documentary is very much about Sellars' vision for Messiaen's theatrical drama. Very little is said about Messiaen's music.
This live recording was made at the Royal Albert Hall during one of Londons famous Promenade Concert seasons. Sir Georg Solti conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a magnificent performance of Berliozs concert cantata. This feast of Berlioz launched Soltis farewell tour with the orchestra he had directed for twenty years and was described by The Times as the unsurpassable culmination of two decades of music-making...one that summarised all that has been most admirable about Soltis long reign in Chicago. Like reading the book by flashes of lightning was how one writer described the relationship of Berlioz to Goethe in this Dramatic Legend, his way of shaping twenty scenes selected from the story into a narrative in four parts. Though it has sometimes been staged, the works drama is to be found within the music itself, which illuminates the incidents with what the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham once called a bunch of the loveliest tunes in existence.
Aging opera singer Joachim Dallayrac retires from the stage and retreats to the countryside to school two young singers. Although the rigorous training takes its toll on both teacher and students, there is plenty of time for relationships to develop between the three.
oseph, Baron Van Damme (born 25 August 1940 in Brussels), known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone, described as having "a magnificent resonant and expressive voice" and being "an excellent actor". At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance. He made his opera début as the music teacher Don Basilio in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Paris Opera in 1961, and remained in the company until 1965, when he sang his first major role, Escamillo from Bizet's Carmen. He then sang for two seasons at Geneva, La Scala, Covent Garden, and in Paris. At Geneva, Van Dam sang in the première of Milhaud's La mère coupable in 1966. Lorin Maazel heard van Dam and invited him to record Ravel’s L’heure espagnole with him for Deutsche Grammophon. In 1967, Maazel asked him to join the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Van Dam has performed at L’Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Salzburg Festival, and festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Orange, France. Van Dam has become the Master in Residence of the singing section at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in his home country, Belgium, since 2011. Van Dam is also a concert, oratorio, and Lieder singer and has won international awards for his performances on stage and in recordings. Berlin conferred on him the title of Kammersänger in 1974, and the same year he received the German Music Critics’ Prize. Other awards include the Gold Medal of the Belgian Press (1976), Grand Prix de l’Académie française du Disque (1979), Orphée d’Or de l’Académie Lyrique Française (1980), the European Critics’ Prize, (1985), Diapason d’Or and Prix de la Nouvelle Académie du Disque (1993), and the Orphée d’Or de l’Académie du Disque Lyrique (1994). In August 1998, His Majesty King Albert II of Belgium made van Dam a baron, recognizing him as one of the finest classical singers. On 4 December 1999 van Dam was one of the performers at the marriage of Belgium's Crown Prince Philippe and Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz. Van Dam is featured as one of the three interviewees in 'Doucement les Basses', with Gabriel Bacquier and Claudio Desderi discussing their approach to roles in the bass-baritone repertoire. Van Dam appears in the films The Music Teacher (1988) as Joachim Dallayrac, and in Don Giovanni (1979) as Leporello, directed by Joseph Losey, and conducted by Maazel. Also featured in that film are Ruggero Raimondi, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Teresa Berganza, Edda Moser, Malcolm King, Kenneth Riegel and John Macurdy. Van Dam also appears as Hans Sachs in the DVD of the 2003 Zürich Opera production of Die Meistersinger conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. ... Source: Article "José van Dam" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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