Dramatic tenors — the burly men whose high voices soar over orchestras, love triangles and World Cup finals — are the genetic freaks of the opera world. Like Olympic sprinters or 6’3” supermodels, their rarity puts them in high demand internationally in a specialised and challenging niche.
Our own contribution to this narrow field, Rustenburg-born Johan Botha, has been a stranger to South Africa’s music scene for all of his illustrious career. Botha left the country in the early Nineties, when funding and support for the arts in general and opera in particular was in steep decline. The only choice for a young, talented singer to build a career without becoming an accountant was to seek his fortune overseas, beginning in the tough and competitive opera houses of Germany and Austria.
That changes this week when Botha performs as the headline act in Cape Town and Johannesburg in Opera Extravaganza.
The rarity of dramatic voices is exacerbated, according to Botha, by the fact that European opera houses overuse young singers with big voices, pushing them too hard and too early. Botha was careful to avoid this, working his way gradually into new roles, broadening his repertoire at a comfortable pace while managing his hectic schedule to allow enough rest for the voice. His career so far has nevertheless been stellar, including performances at all the major opera houses, from London’s Covent Garden to La Scala in Milan.
Recent highlights for him include the title role in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello at the Vienna State Opera and Walther in Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Botha began his singing in a lower register, singing baritone while a student in the Eighties and moving up to higher and more demanding roles. As his fach — or voice category — changed, Botha moved on to lyric tenor roles, the youthful and exuberant characters in operas. He says that he still practises these roles as the agility and technique they require is like ”oil for the voice”.
Later, Botha moved on to the meatier, dramatic Italian roles and the equivalent German heldentenor (heroic tenor) roles of Wagner and Richard Strauss. The true heldentenor voice is extremely rare, combining a big range, phenomenal power and stamina with a baritonal lower register. The last century has produced only a handful of singers capable of pulling off these marathon-like feats.
Botha says one of his long-term goals is the role of Tristan, the tenor role in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. This role is a pinnacle for tenors — long, high and strenuous. Botha reckons that he will perform it in about 10 years’ time, such is the preparation and maturity needed for the role. He will use concert performances of the Tristan arias as preparation for the role, and only try a staged version when he feels completely comfortable with its challenges. The irony of the role is that its difficulty relegates it to men in their fifties, playing a character in his teens.
Botha will sing arias by Wagner and Giacomo Puccini at Opera Extravaganza, including the iconic Nessun Dorma, made famous at the 1990 World Cup but originally from Puccini’s Turandot. The programme in Cape Town will also feature music by Verdi, including Celeste Aida from the opera Aida.
Also on the programme are local tenors Musa Nkuna and Stéfan Louw, sopranos Beverley Chiat, KeleÂÂbogile Boikanyo and Thembisile Twala, and baritone Ntsikelelo Mali. Upping the extravagance ante are the Bala Brothers, as well as the Gauteng Choristers and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. The Gauteng Choristers will sing famous choruses by Jacques Offenbach, Charles Gounod and Puccini.
The show is directed by Laurence Dale, a former operatic tenor himself, under the baton of maestro Leslie Dunner.
Opera Extravaganza shows at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre until July 1 and at Cape Town’s Artscape Opera House on July 3