His name is less known than his work. This was often heard: as a singing teacher, Geert Berghs coached countless classical singers: soloists, but also choristers who subsequently ended up everywhere and nowhere.
How great his influence really was became clear at his farewell. Berghs was popular, but it was still surprising that there would be such a turnout – from singers who had taken lessons from him decades ago to current conservatory students.
Circa 1955
Geert Berghs was born in Venlo in 1953, the youngest in a family with four children. After studying medicine, he focused entirely on music. He took singing lessons with Margreet Honig and sang as a tenor for about thirty years, both solo and in choirs, including in The Amsterdam Baroque Choir of Ton Koopman.
Before that he ended up in a choir of Daniel Reuss (64), now 45 years ago. One of Reuss’s earliest memories: “That he got along very well with his neighbor. They laughed so often that rehearsing became impossible. Geert could really laugh very hard.”
His humor is also the first thing his niece Constance Berghs (55) mentions. From an early age, she remembers her “exuberant uncle” for his waving arms, his laugh and his slightly sarcastic and teasing jokes. “He was the pacesetter. But he was also a very good listener. He was such a terribly sweet man.” And vital: he worked on his own boat until the very end, which he bought after renovating and furnishing his and his husband Sjaak’s house in Bussum from top to bottom.
‘He made you feel like everything was about you. With him I dared anything’
Many of his students remember him primarily as a fatherly motivator. Marleene Goldstein (54) knew Berghs for about thirty years, eighteen of which she took lessons from him. “He could give you the feeling that everything revolves around you. With him I dared to do anything, including just ugly singing.” He saw her shame in singing, Goldstein says. “I never lacked self-confidence and he wanted to help me with that. ‘Hey, we’re just going to try,’ he would say with his Limburg accent. I always came away cheerful.”
He was “well-groomed, chic,” she would add to the list of qualities. “If I talked flatly, he would repeat me. I had to say sugar very politely. And refrigerator, refrigerator were not allowed.”
Scandinavian livestock farming
His life’s work was ‘Meesters & Gezellen’, an annual project since 2011 to help talented young singers gain professional experience. A choir with one professional for every five singing students, who rehearse and perform together. Conductor Reuss was conductor in the project several times: “Not talking too much, not teaching too much, just standing next to a professional and learning from practice, that was the goal. Geert always compared it to Scandinavian livestock farming, where they put a heifer that is giving birth for the first time next to an experienced cow. Then things went better, was the experience.”
Geert Berghs (middle) with Meesters & Gezellen in 2022.
Reuss saw many try to set up projects for talented choristers, but nothing worked as well as Meesters & Gezellen. “Many young singers have ended up in professional choirs.”
The knowledge of the human body, gained in his first studies, was indeed useful to Berghs. In Nijmegen he obtained his PhD on the aging of the singing voice. Reuss: “He was the singing doctor. He took that knowledge with him to Meesters & Gezellen. He did endless singing exercises with the students. In the beginning I thought ‘God man, this is taking so long’, but later I saw how much those simple exercises yielded. Singers quickly think that exercises are not necessary because their voice will work without those exercises. Yes, now it does. But not in five years. I know many singers who already became less good at the age of 35.” Berghs did everything he could to prevent that.
Berghs not only invented Meesters & Gezellen, he wrote it. Arranging singers, applying for funds, booking concerts, finding places for singers to stay – Berghs did it all himself, until his unexpected death. “That worked because he was an incredibly strong-willed person,” says Reuss. “He did not shy away from a conflict. At the farewell, a former student said that it was better to first agree with him, and then think about what you thought about it. He was the type who stood for something.”
He also already had the next edition of Meesters & Gezellen, in February next year, largely in the pipeline. No one was concerned with Berghs’ succession, least of all himself. Reuss and Berghs have discussed several times that Cappella Amsterdam, the choir of conductor Reuss, might be able to take over the project. Reuss: “’That will happen, I still have too much energy now,’ Geert would say.” An appeal was made at the funeral for anyone who would like to put their shoulders to the wheel to come forward.
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.