Kobie van Rensburg
Encyclopedia
Kobie van Rensburg is a South Africa
n tenor
and opera director.
.
He made his debut in 1991 at the age of 20 as Belmonte in Mozart's
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
for the Roodeport City Opera. In 1996, he started an engagement at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich
. Since the year 2000 van Rensburg has been working regularly with the Lautten Compagney Berlin (director: Wolfgang Katschner). With this ensemble he staged Monteverdi's
L'Orfeo and published three recordings. Since 2011 van Rensburg collaborates with a different emsemble for Ancient and New Music, called "così facciamo". With them he staged Handel’s
Ariodante
.
He sung his first name part as and in Mozart’s Idomeneo
in 2006 for the New York
Metropolitan Opera
. Van Rensburg‘s repertoire focuses on Baroque music
.
However, he has also made his mark in song and Lied
interpretation, focusing on English Baroque composers (i.e. Dowland
, Byrd
, Purcell
), as well as German composers Beethoven
, Schumann
and Schubert
, to name only a few.
Peer Boysen the pasticcio
Ein Theater nach der Mode in 2002, featuring compositions by Handel and other Baroque composers. In 2006 he gave his directorial debut in the Opernhaus Halle with Monteverdi‘s L'Orfeo, in which he also sang the name part. Handel‘s first oratorio
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno was staged in 2009 in Passau
by van Rensburg. His latest directorial work includes Handel’s opera
Ariodante, premiered in February 2011 at the Munich Cuvilliés-Theater. Just like in his former own production Il pianto d'Orfeo van Rensburg links the expressiveness of dancing with the music of the composition. The dancer serves as an Alter ego
to the singer and thereby illustrates the emotions of the character he or she impersonates.
)
2009: "Bach Cantatas - Vol.4" (Johann Sebastian Bach
, John Eliot Gardiner
, English Baroque Soloists)
2009: "Alcina
" (Georg Friedrich Händel, Alan Curtis, Il Complesso Barocco)
2008: "Saul
, Messiah
" (Georg Friedrich Händel, René Jacobs, Concerto Köln & Freiburger Barockorchester)
2007: "Der Messias" (Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Katschner, Lautten Compagney, Dresdner Kammerchor)
2006: "Messiah" (Georg Friedrich Händel, René Jacobs, Freiburger Barockorchester)
2006: "Cantone in Utica" (Giovanni Battista Ferrandini
, Christoph Hammer, Neue Hofkapelle München)
2006: "Il pianto d'Orfeo" (various composers, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
2005: "Der Fliegende Holländer" (Richard Wagner
, Bruno Weil, Cappella Coloniensis)
2004: "Le Nozze di Figaro" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, René Jacobs, Concerto Köln)
2003: "Griselda" (Alessandro Scarlatti
, René Jacobs, Akademie für alte Musik Berlin)
2002: "Madrigali Guerrieri ad Amorosi" (Claudio Monteverdi, René Jacobs, Concerto Vocale)
2001: "Liededition Vol.1 & 2" (Fanny Hensel, Kelvin Groot)
2001: "Songs of An English Cavalier" (various composers, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
2000: "Handel's Beard", Airs for Tenor (Georg Friedrich Händel, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
", live at Teatro Real
Madrid
(Claudio Monteverdi, Pier Luigi Pizzi
, Les Arts Florissants
)
2005: "L'Orfeo" (Claudio Monteverdi, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney Berlin)
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n 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...
and opera director.
Life
Van Rensburg studied singing with Werner Nel at the Northwest University of South Africa, but also law and international politics at Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education..
He made his debut in 1991 at the age of 20 as Belmonte in Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...
for the Roodeport City Opera. In 1996, he started an engagement at the Gärtnerplatztheater in 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...
. Since the year 2000 van Rensburg has been working regularly with the Lautten Compagney Berlin (director: Wolfgang Katschner). With this ensemble he staged Monteverdi's
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...
L'Orfeo and published three recordings. Since 2011 van Rensburg collaborates with a different emsemble for Ancient and New Music, called "così facciamo". With them he staged Handel’s
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
Ariodante
Ariodante
Ariodante is an opera seria in three acts by Handel. The anonymous Italian libretto was based on a work by Antonio Salvi, which in turn was adapted from Canti 5 and 6 of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso...
.
He sung his first name part as and in Mozart’s Idomeneo
Idomeneo
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...
in 2006 for the New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
. Van Rensburg‘s repertoire focuses on Baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
.
However, he has also made his mark in song and Lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
interpretation, focusing on English Baroque composers (i.e. Dowland
John Dowland
John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" , "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has...
, Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
, Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
), as well as German composers Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
and Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, to name only a few.
Opera stage direction
At the Munich Gärtnerplatztheater van Rensburg staged, together with the librettistLibretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
Peer Boysen the pasticcio
Pasticcio
In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic.-Etymology:The term is first attested in the...
Ein Theater nach der Mode in 2002, featuring compositions by Handel and other Baroque composers. In 2006 he gave his directorial debut in the Opernhaus Halle with Monteverdi‘s L'Orfeo, in which he also sang the name part. Handel‘s first oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno was staged in 2009 in Passau
Passau
Passau is a town in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the Dreiflüssestadt or "City of Three Rivers," because the Danube is joined at Passau by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north....
by van Rensburg. His latest directorial work includes Handel’s 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...
Ariodante, premiered in February 2011 at the Munich Cuvilliés-Theater. Just like in his former own production Il pianto d'Orfeo van Rensburg links the expressiveness of dancing with the music of the composition. The dancer serves as an Alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
to the singer and thereby illustrates the emotions of the character he or she impersonates.
Repertoire (roles)
- Pane in La CalistoLa CalistoLa Calisto is an opera by Francesco Cavalli with a libretto by Giovanni Faustini. The libretto was published in 1651 by Giuliani and Batti. The opera received its first performance on 28 November 1651 at the Teatro San Apollinare, Venice...
(Francesco CavalliFrancesco CavalliFrancesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
) - Acis in Acis and GalateaAcis and GalateaAcis and Galatea is a musical work by George Frideric Handel with an English text by John Gay. The work has been variously described as a serenata, a masque, a pastoral or pastoral opera, a "little opera" , an entertainment and in the New Grove Dictionary of Music an oratorio...
(Georg Friedrich Händel) - Grimoaldo in RodelindaRodelindaRodelinda, regina de' Longobardi is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel. It was based on a libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, in turn based on an earlier libretto by Antonio Salvi set by Giacomo Antonio Perti in 1710...
(Georg Friedrich Händel) - Jupiter in Semele (Georg Friedrich Händel)
- Orfeo in L'Orfeo (Claudio Monteverdi)
- Bastien in Bastien und BastienneBastien und BastienneBastien und Bastienne , K. 50 is a one-act singspiel, a comic opera, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart....
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Don Ottavio in Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
(Wolfgang Anmadeus Mozart) - Idomeneo in IdomeneoIdomeneoIdomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Tito in La Clemenza di TitoLa clemenza di TitoLa clemenza di Tito , K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Metastasio...
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Tamino in Die Zauberflöte (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
- Ubaldo in ArmidaArmidaThe story of Armida, a Saracen sorceress and Rinaldo, a soldier in the First Crusade, was created by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso. In his epic Gerusalemme liberata, Rinaldo is a fierce and determined warrior who is also honorable and handsome...
(Gioachino Rossini) - Nightingale in Ein Theater nach der Mode (Kobie van Rensburg & Peer Boysen)
CDs
2009: "Rodrigo" (Georg Friedrich Händel, Eduardo Lopéz Banzo, Al Ayre EspañolAl Ayre Español
Al Ayre Español is a vocal and instrumental ensemble specialized on early music founded in 1988 by Eduardo López Banzo .The name of the ensemble was inspired by the title for a guitar Fugue of the Calanda composer, Gaspar Sanz...
)
2009: "Bach Cantatas - Vol.4" (Johann Sebastian Bach
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...
, John Eliot Gardiner
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir , the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique...
, English Baroque Soloists)
2009: "Alcina
Alcina
Alcina is an opera seria by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of L'isola di Alcina, an opera that was set in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he acquired the year after, during his travels in Italy...
" (Georg Friedrich Händel, Alan Curtis, Il Complesso Barocco)
2008: "Saul
Saul (Handel)
Saul is an oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens. Taken from the 1st Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with his eventual successor, David; one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred,...
, Messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
" (Georg Friedrich Händel, René Jacobs, Concerto Köln & Freiburger Barockorchester)
2007: "Der Messias" (Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Katschner, Lautten Compagney, Dresdner Kammerchor)
2006: "Messiah" (Georg Friedrich Händel, René Jacobs, Freiburger Barockorchester)
2006: "Cantone in Utica" (Giovanni Battista Ferrandini
Giovanni Battista Ferrandini
Giovanni Battista Ferrandini , an Italian composer of the Baroque and Classical eras, was born in Venice, Italy and died in Munich, at the age of 81....
, Christoph Hammer, Neue Hofkapelle München)
2006: "Il pianto d'Orfeo" (various composers, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
2005: "Der Fliegende Holländer" (Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, Bruno Weil, Cappella Coloniensis)
2004: "Le Nozze di Figaro" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, René Jacobs, Concerto Köln)
2003: "Griselda" (Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...
, René Jacobs, Akademie für alte Musik Berlin)
2002: "Madrigali Guerrieri ad Amorosi" (Claudio Monteverdi, René Jacobs, Concerto Vocale)
2001: "Liededition Vol.1 & 2" (Fanny Hensel, Kelvin Groot)
2001: "Songs of An English Cavalier" (various composers, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
2000: "Handel's Beard", Airs for Tenor (Georg Friedrich Händel, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney)
DVDs
2008: "Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patriaIl ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera in a prologue and five acts , set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season...
", live at Teatro Real
Teatro Real
The Teatro Real or simply El Real , is a major opera house located in Madrid, Spain.-History:...
Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
(Claudio Monteverdi, Pier Luigi Pizzi
Pier Luigi Pizzi
Pier Luigi Pizzi is an Italian opera director, set designer, and costume designer.-Biography:Pizzi was born in Milan, Italy, and earned a degree in architecture at the Politecnico of Milan...
, Les Arts Florissants
Les Arts Florissants (ensemble)
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra...
)
2005: "L'Orfeo" (Claudio Monteverdi, Kobie van Rensburg, Lautten Compagney Berlin)