Every lover of vocal music in our country who has seen José Van Dam in his countless productions at the Muntschouwburg can only be amazed that his exceptional talent is only now receiving a "lifetime award", the "oscar" for his career. In 2025, the bass-baritone will indeed be able to blow out 85 candles. We dare to assume that as a singer with excellent breathing technique, he will still be able to do so, if fate allows it.
Of the living Belgian singers, José Van Dam is without exaggeration our greatest and undoubtedly also internationally most famous singer. As an opera singer, José Van Dam is a fortunate man: he can look back on a career of more than fifty years in which he performed virtually all the roles he wanted to sing. Ranging from Escamillo in Carmen and Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro to Faust in La Damnation de Faust, Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger. Unforgettable is his performance as Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande alongside the late Susan Chilcott and under the direction of Sir Antonio Pappano: who can combine elegant grace and gags like he does! And of course that impressive role of Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande. He was discerning and self-critical enough to know when which role suited him best. In recent years of his active career, he therefore preferred to perform especially as a song recitalist. What he never lets go of is his involvement in the training of singers, among other things at the Muziekkapel Koningin Elisabeth. He was also repeatedly a jury member at the Koningin Elisabeth Competition for Singing and is moreover one of the initiators of the Singing discipline at this competition.
He has collaborated with the greatest conductors and directors, Herbert von Karajan, who virtually discovered him, Claudio Abbado, Giorgio Strehler, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Willy Decker.
Singing is not a profession, José Van Dam once told me in an interview. It is a "holy ministry" to which one must dedicate oneself and which determines one's entire life. With his characteristic modesty, he feels himself a "grain of sand in the enormous world of music". That great world of music lives on, not those who merely pass through it, as he says.
Still, it is good that this international prize emphasizes his "passing through" for a moment. A nice detail is that it is moreover presented to him in Munich by another fellow countryman who has earned his stripes internationally in the opera world, Serge Dorny.