Johan Botha: North West-born Wagner tenor who delighted audiences with his virtuosity
JOHAN Botha, who has died in Vienna at the age of 51, was regarded as one of the world’s greatest operatic tenors.
After his European debut in Paris in 1993 he sang at all the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Royal Opera House in London and the Vienna State Opera.
He had a voice that was both exquisite and powerful and could handle with apparent ease the most notoriously difficult parts by Wagner, Strauss and Verdi, who made almost impossible demands on their tenors.
He handled with equal aplomb the tenor roles of Mozart and Puccini, which come with their own very different demands.
Meticulously loyal to the score, Botha comfortably hit registers few other tenors dared to attempt. When he achieved the impossible there’d be a moment’s stunned silence from seasoned operagoers followed by a storm of almost disbelieving applause. And Botha would be in heaven.
He was never more in his element than when on stage. The bigger the occasion and audience, and more challenging the part, the happier he was.
“It thrills the hell out of me,” he said when asked how he coped with stress. “I was born for it.”
Botha was born on August 19 1965 in the small farming community of Derby, 60km from Rustenburg in North West, where his father was postmaster and his mother postmistress.
He was dyslexic. Because he couldn’t read words or spell, people thought him stupid. What he could do, however, was read music. “This proved to everyone I could accomplish something. Singing became my life.”
At the age of five he heard his father’s vinyl recording of La Traviata and announced that he would be an opera singer when he grew up. He mimicked the voices on his father’s records. On hearing him, the dominee told his parents to send him for singing lessons, which he began when he was 10.
After two years of compulsory military service in the South African Air Force choir he studied at the Pretoria Technikon opera school, where his teacher, Eric Muller, predicted he would be “one of the best Wagner tenors in the world”.
After his professional debut in Der Freischütz in Roodepoort in 1989 at the age of 24 he was invited to sing in the chorus at the Bayreuth Festival.
His major breakthrough came with an eye-catching performance in Madama Butterfly at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 1993, which resulted in contracts with major opera houses in Paris, Berlin, Milan, London, New York and Vienna, where he settled and took Austrian citizenship.
Botha fought an unending battle against an improbably large girth that made it hard to take him seriously as a stage lover. A critic likened his appearance to that of “a stuffed bear on wheels”.
Botha said he was “bloody hungry” after a long performance and had to eat. He complained that people expected opera singers to look like models on TV. “But believe me, no anorexic could sing Otello.”
His last performances were in South Africa, at a concert in Cape Town for the Cancer Association on August 13, and at Stellenbosch University on August 16 where he sang Heimwee — longing for home.
Botha, who had cancer, left his wife, Sonja, whom he married in 1992, and two children. — Chris Barron
It thrills the hell out of me. I was born for it