Crazy that Matthijs van Nieuwkerk never participated in The smartest person. He must nevertheless be bulked up in knowledge, as much as he shares it with the viewer. He spreads his love and knowledge of literature, jazz and chansons through television. And what he doesn’t know himself, he lets himself (and us) explain by someone else. He made up DWDD University, with physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf, now Minister of Education. Biologist Freek Vonk was also one of his speakers, terrorism expert Beatrice de Graaf. There was summer DWDD Summer School. After three years of absence, that program is now back as summer school. Wednesday evening was the first of four ‘lectures’.
I started about The smartest person, because opera singer Francis van Broekhuizen stood out so much in the summer of 2020 that she has been missing from almost every television program since then. She was the dark horse from The smartest person, exulted presenter Philip Freriks. An “opera diva with notes to her song,” which on command boomed to high C and burst into song every other hour. “112 decibels without a microphone,” she said. “Similar to a jet fighter,” knew all-knowing Maarten van Rossem. She then confessed that she slept with Maarten every night because she loved listening to his lecture podcast.
In the television season after that she became close friends with Eva Jinek at Jinekshe had “a click” with Chantal Janzen in Beat The Championsshe blew into the retreat crying The traitors, because the conspiracy nonsense that comes with the show took her back to the time when she was bullied. She then told about that bullying in an episode of Intersection. And when she became an ambassador for Pride, she was a guest everywhere again. Do I have to continue or is it clear that she has suddenly become very famous? So she, Francis van Broekhuizen, was the first guest teacher of the summer school and she spoke last night of her “lifelong obsession” with the most famous opera singer ever, Maria Callas.
Trills and Walks by Mariah Carey
I watched those episodes from back then, in which Francis van Broekhuizen eventually made it to the final, and in one of the rounds she got a question about Maria Callas. Or actually about Callas’ great but tragic love, the wealthy shipowner Artistoteles Onassis. What Francis van Broekhuizen then said was an open application for a place in Matthijs van Nieuwkerk’s teaching staff: “I can talk about Callas for hours.” Three weeks if necessary, but in any case “longer than Maarten van Rossem.”
Last night she kept it to forty minutes and she talked about Callas as the best-selling opera singer, and about Callas ‘la divina’, the diva who would die of a broken heart at 53. She was very entertaining. Her story was somewhere between a Ted talk, a speaking engagement and a stand-up performance. To explain the technique of bel canto, she played a bit of Mariah Carey, a pop singer who interspersed her singing with trills and runs. She even did it herself. She showed how singers stood on the stage in the time before the Callas revolution. She didn’t just sing, she acted. Before that, they were dead straight, disguised figures who stretch their arms wide when it’s their turn. Park and bark it was called. Stand and sing.
In summer school was the type of audience you expect at a lecture, graying and interested. In the front row, Matthijs van Nieuwkerk was enjoying and beaming. Who is the smartest here? Not Francis van Broekhuizen, she also participated in this summer The smartest person, All Stars, the anniversary edition. But she didn’t make it to the final.