From that time on my interest for opera was born. As a little fellow of twelve years old I already started to visit the opera in The Hague and a performance of Carmen, with in the title role the Dutch mezzo-soprano Cora Canne-Meijer, made a deep impression on me.

"Carmen" with in the title-role Cora Canne-Meijer.

I also very well remember my first acquaintance with Maria Callas. Of course it was not a live performance, but a radio broadcast of Bellini's "Norma". It must have been the studio recording of 1954 with Ebe Stignani as Adalgisa and Mario Filippeschi as Pollione. So beautiful, so moving as she performed the duet "in mio mano, alfin tu sei" together with tenor Mario Filippeschi! And don't forget the both great duets with Adalgisa (Ebe Stignani). My father already possessed a tape recorder, a Philips box model, and that is the first performance - a summary of highlights from Norma - that I taped. My tapes, to tell them apart from those of my father, were marked with my name "Joop", and I still have them. For the first time, I realised that opera singing is not only the creation of beautiful sounds, but the expression of human emotions, for which a voice does not always have to sound beautiful, even more, at times has to sound ugly (notice Lady Macbeth!). I heard such a use of voice for the first time from Maria Callas.

Cora Canne Meijer as "Carmen".

Maria Callas as "Norma"

Maria Callas as Lady Macbeth, La Gioconda

Rosa Ponselle

Other examples of such a use of voice: Rosa Ponselle in the aria "Suicidio" from "La Gioconda" of Ponchielli, Magda Olivero in "Del sultano Amuratte" from "Adriana Lecouvreur". Another radio broadcast I taped was "Remembering Richard Tauber", a program with arias sung by this great Austrian tenor. Not really a beautiful voice, limited even in some aspects, but how well he could sing with it. I have never heard someone singing so softly - whispering almost -, so intimate. Did you ever hear him sing German folk songs? A compact disc with those songs where, for me, compact disc of the year.

Rosa Ponselle in "Suicidio", La Gioconda

"Alle Tagen ist kein Sonntag", Richard Tauber

With monocle "Richard Tauber"

My passion for opera stays, and has extended to other forms of classical music. At present for example I even enjoy very much the kind of Baroque music as composed by J.S.Bach, especially the cantatas; in my opinion there are real gems among them. In my country - The Netherlands - there is a chain of pharmacy retailers, "Het Kruidvat", which sells a - very good and cheap - Bach Edition (155 CD's) from the label "Brilliant Classics": less than a pound for one CD! By the way, I'm not a shareholder...
Unfortunately, searching at the Internet did not provide me with much information about Dutch male or female singers. Hence, I decided that something had to be done about it and I started with creating my site "Dutch Divas". A site, started in the beginning with a quartet of singers: Aafje Heynis, Gré Brouwenstijn, Elly Ameling and Jo Vincent, but at this moment the site is already enlarged to more than 200 singers and a few Dutch conductors. Additionally, as you already have noticed in my homepage, there is given attention to a number of my favourite singers from abroad. I hope you will enjoy it!

J.L.

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