John van Kesteren
Encyclopedia
John van Kesteren was a Dutch
opera
tic tenor
.
Van Kesteren first worked as an electronic telex
specialist for the Dutch Telegraph Company PTT. His very first appearance as a non-professional singer was in 1942 with an operetta
company in Apeldoorn
in the French operetta The Bells of Corneville. During World War II he appeared in five French and German operettas. From 1946 on he studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with the bass Willem Ravelli. He went on to study with Prof. Dr. Lothar Wallerstein of the Vienna State Opera
.
He made his operatic debut in 1947 in Scheveningen, the Netherlands with the ensemble of Vienna State Opera as the Italian singer in Der Rosenkavalier
, a production with Anni Konetzni, Fritz Krenn and Hilde Güden. In 1949, he got another unique chance when world-famous conductor Erich Kleiber
asked him to audition for the roles of the young sailor and Melot in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
, in a production by the Wagner Society in Amsterdam
, once again, directed by Lothar Wallerstein. His partners were Kirsten Flagstad
, Max Lorenz and Hans Hotter
. In 1947, his concert career started in Switzerland in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
under the direction of Charles Münch
.
After completing his studies with Nadia Boulanger
in Paris and Vera Schwarz in Salzburg
, Van Kesteren was invited in 1954 to Berlin's Komische Oper to sing Nurreddin in Cornelius's
The Barber of Baghdad under the direction of Walter Felsenstein
and to sing the title role in the first performance in Germany of Rossini's Le comte Ory
under the direction of Carl Ebert
at the Stadtische Oper in 1956. In 1959 he moved to Munich
at the invitation of both the German National Theatre and the Theater am Gartnerplaz, where he remained for seventeen years singing 33 opera's and operettas.
As a lyric tenor with a remarkable range in the upper register, he specialized in roles that are generally difficult to cast, in both the 18th and 19th-century repertoire, including Jean Ph. Rameau's Platée, Rossini's Le Comte Ory and Chapelou in Adam's Le Postillon de Longjumeau, and 20th-century works, ranging from roles in Richard Strauss's operas and Carl Orffs Carmina Burana to Sinopoli's Lou Salome. Carl Orff
, who later became a close friend, would write to people anywhere in the world planning to perform Carmina Burana
saying that John van Kesteren was his favourite "Roasted Swan". He also performed this role in the award winning movie of the cantata together with Hermann Prey
, Lucia Popp
and director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
and conductor Kurt Eichhorn
.
In later years Van Kesteren specialized in character parts, as well as singing a wide concert repertoire that included hundreds of appearances as the Evangelist
in Bach's
St Matthew Passion. At Benjamin Britten
's suggestion to conductor Herbert von Karajan
he sang at first German performance of Britten's War Requiem
with the Berlin Philharmonic. With van Karajan and the same orchestra, Van Kesteren sang at the 25th commemoration in Beethoven's ninth symphony
and Missa Solemnis in Hiroshima
and sang the Evangelist in the first Russian performance of the St Matthew Passion in Moscow.
In 1974, Van Kesteren was officially invited to start a revival of cultural ties between the Netherlands and Indonesia
, presenting concerts, radio and television programmes. He sang concerts and opera in among other cities, London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Oslo etc. The Bavarian government named him Kammersänger. He was an Officer in the order of the Royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau. and the German government bestowed upon him the Bundesverdienstkreuz
first class. Until his death in 2008, John van Kesteren lived in, Jupiter, Florida
with his wife Louise. He continued to sing into his eighties. van Kesteren's last major performance was a solo recital for the inauguration of Palm Beach Atlantic University's Helen K. Persson Recital Hall in 2000.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
.
Van Kesteren first worked as an electronic telex
Telex
Telex may refer to:* Telex , , a communications network** Teleprinter, the device used on the above network* Telex , a Belgian pop group...
specialist for the Dutch Telegraph Company PTT. His very first appearance as a non-professional singer was in 1942 with an operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
company in Apeldoorn
Apeldoorn
Apeldoorn is a municipality and city in the province of Gelderland, about 60 miles south east of Amsterdam, in the centre of the Netherlands. It is a regional centre and has 155,000 . The municipality of Apeldoorn, including villages like Beekbergen, Loenen and Hoenderloo, has over 155,000...
in the French operetta The Bells of Corneville. During World War II he appeared in five French and German operettas. From 1946 on he studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with the bass Willem Ravelli. He went on to study with Prof. Dr. Lothar Wallerstein of the Vienna State Opera
Vienna State Opera
The Vienna State Opera is an opera house – and opera company – with a history dating back to the mid-19th century. It is located in the centre of Vienna, Austria. It was originally called the Vienna Court Opera . In 1920, with the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy by the First Austrian...
.
He made his operatic debut in 1947 in Scheveningen, the Netherlands with the ensemble of Vienna State Opera as the Italian singer in Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
, a production with Anni Konetzni, Fritz Krenn and Hilde Güden. In 1949, he got another unique chance when world-famous conductor Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber
Erich Kleiber was an Austrian conductor.- Biography :Born in Vienna, Kleiber studied in Prague...
asked him to audition for the roles of the young sailor and Melot in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
, in a production by the Wagner Society in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, once again, directed by Lothar Wallerstein. His partners were Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano...
, Max Lorenz and Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose...
. In 1947, his concert career started in Switzerland in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
Missa Solemnis (Beethoven)
The Missa solemnis in D Major, Op. 123 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven from 1819-1823. It was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg, under the auspices of Beethoven's patron Prince Nikolai Galitzin; an incomplete performance was given in Vienna on 7 May 1824, when the Kyrie,...
under the direction of Charles Münch
Charles Münch
Charles Munch was an Alsatian symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he is best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.-Biography:...
.
After completing his studies with Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
in Paris and Vera Schwarz in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Van Kesteren was invited in 1954 to Berlin's Komische Oper to sing Nurreddin in Cornelius's
Peter Cornelius
Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. He was born and died in Mainz where his grave in the Hauptfriedhof survives....
The Barber of Baghdad under the direction of Walter Felsenstein
Walter Felsenstein
Walter Felsenstein was an Austrian theater and opera director.He was one of the most important exponents of textual accuracy, productions in which dramatic and musical values were exquisitely researched and balanced...
and to sing the title role in the first performance in Germany of Rossini's Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory
Le comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
under the direction of Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert
Carl Ebert was a German theatre and opera producer and administrator.-Biography:He worked as an actor and theatre director in Germany from 1915 to 1927, directing Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities in Darmstadt in 1927...
at the Stadtische Oper in 1956. In 1959 he moved to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
at the invitation of both the German National Theatre and the Theater am Gartnerplaz, where he remained for seventeen years singing 33 opera's and operettas.
As a lyric tenor with a remarkable range in the upper register, he specialized in roles that are generally difficult to cast, in both the 18th and 19th-century repertoire, including Jean Ph. Rameau's Platée, Rossini's Le Comte Ory and Chapelou in Adam's Le Postillon de Longjumeau, and 20th-century works, ranging from roles in Richard Strauss's operas and Carl Orffs Carmina Burana to Sinopoli's Lou Salome. Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
, who later became a close friend, would write to people anywhere in the world planning to perform Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana (Orff)
Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata composed by Carl Orff in 1935 and 1936. It is based on 24 of the poems found in the medieval collection Carmina Burana...
saying that John van Kesteren was his favourite "Roasted Swan". He also performed this role in the award winning movie of the cantata together with Hermann Prey
Hermann Prey
Hermann Prey was a German lyric baritone. He is most famous for lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.-Biography:...
, Lucia Popp
Lucia Popp
Lucia Popp was a notable Slovak operatic soprano. She began her career as a soubrette soprano, and later moved into the light-lyric and lyric coloratura soprano repertoire and then the lighter Richard Strauss and Wagner operas. Her career included performances at Vienna State Opera, the...
and director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle
Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was a noted French opera director.-Biography:Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history there and, in 1952, began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude...
and conductor Kurt Eichhorn
Kurt Eichhorn
Kurt Peter Eichhorn , was a German conductor.Eichhorn was born in Munich, the son of a painter. He studied music at the conservatory in Würzburg with Hermann Zilcher. His conducting debut was in 1932 as a conductor and choral conductor in Bielefeld...
.
In later years Van Kesteren specialized in character parts, as well as singing a wide concert repertoire that included hundreds of appearances as the Evangelist
Evangelist (Bach)
The Evangelist in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the tenor part in his oratorios and Passions who narrates the exact words of the Bible, translated by Martin Luther, in recitative, namely in the works St John Passion, St Matthew Passion, and the Christmas Oratorio, also in the St Mark...
in Bach's
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
St Matthew Passion. At Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's suggestion to conductor Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
he sang at first German performance of Britten's War Requiem
War Requiem
The War Requiem, Op. 66 is a large-scale, non-liturgical setting of the Requiem Mass composed by Benjamin Britten mostly in 1961 and completed January 1962. Interspersed with the traditional Latin texts, in telling juxtaposition, are settings of Wilfred Owen poems...
with the Berlin Philharmonic. With van Karajan and the same orchestra, Van Kesteren sang at the 25th commemoration in Beethoven's ninth symphony
Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
and Missa Solemnis in Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
and sang the Evangelist in the first Russian performance of the St Matthew Passion in Moscow.
In 1974, Van Kesteren was officially invited to start a revival of cultural ties between the Netherlands and Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, presenting concerts, radio and television programmes. He sang concerts and opera in among other cities, London, Tokyo, Melbourne, Rome, Berlin, Paris, Oslo etc. The Bavarian government named him Kammersänger. He was an Officer in the order of the Royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau. and the German government bestowed upon him the Bundesverdienstkreuz
Bundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
first class. Until his death in 2008, John van Kesteren lived in, Jupiter, Florida
Jupiter, Florida
Jupiter is a town located in Palm Beach County, Florida. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 39,328. The estimate population for 2009 is 50,606. As of 2006, the population had grown to 50,028, according to the University of Florida, Bureau of Economic and Business Research....
with his wife Louise. He continued to sing into his eighties. van Kesteren's last major performance was a solo recital for the inauguration of Palm Beach Atlantic University's Helen K. Persson Recital Hall in 2000.