Jacques Urlus

Jacques Urlus (6 January 1867 in Hergenrath, Rhine Province – 6 June 1935 in Noordwijk, Netherlands), was a Dutch dramatic tenor.

He sang to great critical acclaim at major opera houses on both sides of the Atlantic, and his recordings of the music of Richard Wagner are considered to be among the finest ever made.

Jacques Urlus was born to music-loving Dutch parents in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia, nowadays Belgian town of Hergenrath (now part of Kelmis) and grew up in Tilburg in The Netherlands.

Since the family was poor, they could not afford a musical education for their son who had to work at a steel mill in Utrecht instead, singing in choirs in his free time.

Although Cornelie van Zanten is credited in some reference books as being Urlus' teacher, the young tenor was more or less an autodidact when he made his stage début at the Amsterdam opera house on 20 September 1894 as Beppe in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Although Urlus and his wife had several children already, and needed the money, he turned down the Frankfurt offer because the company would not grant him time off each summer to attend Bayreuth: he still hoped for a call from the festival's directors which, as it transpired, would not be forthcoming for another 13 years.

After returning to the Netherlands, Urlus continued enlarging his repertoire and improving his singing technique until he earned a contract with the Leipzig opera House in Germany in 1900.

It took place in Boston, where he sang a Tristan in a series of performances opposite the dramatic sopranos Johanna Gadski and Lillian Nordica as Isolde.

Still, when he sang the lead role in Siegfried only a week later he not only restored his reputation completely but cemented his position as the Met's number one (and, later, its sole) heldentenor.

He performed regularly, for example, the Evangelist in Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion, always to much acclaim, as well as singing Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Florestan in Beethoven's Fidelio.