John van Kesteren

Who was John van Kesteren?

John van Kesteren was a Dutch operatic 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 of 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.