José Van Dam was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1940, and studied in his home city, making his début in Liège as Don Basilio in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. He was immediately offered a contract, at the Paris Opera and Opéra Comique (1961-65), where he learnt his trade performing a variety of smaller rôles.
Two seasons followed at Geneva, where, in 1966, he sang in the première of Milhaud’s La Mère Coupable. Then he joined the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, where, amongst many rôles in the bass-baritone repertoire, he sang Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and the title rôle in Borodin’s Prince Igor.
Equally at home in the French, German and Italian repertoires, he became famous for his portrayal of Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen, which was his début rôle in San Francisco (1970), at Covent Garden (1973) and at The Met (1975). He is now renowned in opera venues throughout the world in particular for his portrayals of Wagner’s Hans Sachs (in Die Meistersinger) and The Flying Dutchman, Verdi’s Philip II (in Don Carlos) and Falstaff, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Moussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. In 1983 he created the title rôle in Messiaen’s Saint Franÿois d’Assise (St Francis of Assisi) at the Paris Opera in 1983.
He is greatly admired as an excellent actor. This quality carries into many recordings, where his abilities to characterise within the voice and to drive the music with dramatic impetus and sensibility, have made him one of todayΓÇÖs busiest and most admired international opera stars.
