A voice for eternity: Johan Botha on his 60th birthday

Today, August 19th, would have been Johan BOTHA's 60th birthday. As one writes these words, it is still hard to believe that his voice fell silent forever almost exactly nine years ago.

Had he been granted to experience this day, it doesn't take much imagination to envision him standing on stage today with the greatest probability – he couldn't have imagined anything else for this occasion. Because singing was literally his life.

Many today can no longer imagine what the emergence of Johan Botha on the international opera scene in the early nineties meant. It was nothing more and nothing less than a revolution – a dramatic voice of such beauty and at the same time of perfect technical mastery, which was equally successful in the Italian and German repertoire. This had not existed for a very long time at that time, and for many opera houses – but not least for the VIENNA STATE OPERA, which rightly appointed him as an honorary member in the last year of his life – he solved all the usual tenor problems, quasi as a one-man show.

When Johan BOTHA died, he was at the height of his career. He had embodied almost all the dream roles of the repertoire that he wanted to sing at the great opera houses of the world at that time. When he died, he had almost finished learning the Tristan, on which he worked literally until his last days; Tristan and Peter Grimes – those were the two roles he absolutely wanted to sing. But it was not to be. But one must be grateful for what he accomplished in his short life – we will probably never hear his like again.

Fortunately, many of Botha's most important roles have been recorded in one way or another – not everything, but most of it has been published so far. And we will of course do everything in our power to make the last treasures accessible, so that future generations can also experience what an exceptional phenomenon Johan Botha was among the great opera stars of his time.

In September 2026, the 10th anniversary of his death will also take place. Until then, we have planned to renovate (and perhaps even supplement) the tomb at the Vienna Central Cemetery for the first time, and above all to create online files with the recordings (published and unpublished). In the following years, we also want to record performance dates as completely as possible and, of course, create an image file – which will hopefully grow steadily.