In Wagner’s Ring Cycle, two siblings who have been separated since childhood stumble upon each other. The instant bond between them is strong enough to change the course of history, both on earth and in the realm of the gods. This just goes to show the strength of siblings when they share a common passion.
For brother and sister Philip and Philine van Lidth de Jeude, their common passion lies in their common career—opera singing.
Philip and Philine each have careers that have spanned several years. Philip began his career as a baritone, later moving up to the dramatic tenor roles. Philine, 10 years his junior, is a dramatic soprano.
“We’re a publicity trick waiting to happen,” says Philine. “I call us ‘the Turandot twins.’ There have been times when we’ve gone to the same audition and I go in and sing Turandot, and he goes in and sings Calaf. There’s nothing like it! And then there’s the Die Walküre connection with our names: ‘Siegmund and Sieglinde’ and ‘Philip and Philine.’”
The pair’s family was deeply dedicated to the arts and to music in their growing-up years.
“Philip was singing before he could talk,” Philine recounts.
Philip, the story goes, was 1 and a half years old when he stood up in his crib and sang, on pitch, the phrase “Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod,” from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.
The arts were very much a part of the pair’s family life, but there was no expectation that each sibling would choose a career in music. Both Philip and Philine credit their mother for their love of singing.
“My father loved music and was a violin nut, but my mother was the one who really brought music to life,” says Philine. “My father referred to her as a bird of paradise who brought color and light to life. She had wanted to be a singer, but she got stuck with a teacher who wasn’t right for her.”
“Erland [their brother] was incredible,” says Philine.
Erland was a bass-baritone who not only performed on the operatic stage, but also had a film career, was a successful and respected computer programmer, and was an Olympic heavyweight wrestler.
Philine laughs, “I remember going to see Erland in performances at Amato Opera [in New York City]. Philip also performed there and years later I performed there, too. How many families can say that all the siblings have performed for one company on different occasions?”
“And talk about somebody who had chutzpah!” Philip laughs. “My brother had it in spades! I got him his first church solo job. [At one time], there were two churches that offered me a job, and of course one of them had to be disappointed, so I suggested they audition Erland. We taught him three solos in one weekend. When he went in, that was all he knew and he went in as if he knew a whole slew. And of course they hired him.”
Philip, the eldest of the three, was born in Holland and came to the United States with his family when he was 5 years old. He was a part of various choirs and choruses and sang songs with Erland, but what he really wanted to do was play the piano.
“I bugged my parents until they let me take piano lessons, because I really wanted to play the piano,” said Philip. “The shift [to singing] took place in my senior year in high school. I got a job as a church soloist, and I had also done my first musical that summer. It was a funny kind of a thing. I did Harry McAfee in Bye Bye Birdie. I loved that role, and I enjoyed being on the stage. Between that and getting the job as a church soloist—and getting paid for singing—I thought to myself, ‘Wow! Combine business with pleasure!’
“At the church I was introduced to a retired opera singer who was an alumna of both The Curtis Institute of Music and of Juilliard . . . she first arranged for me to do an audition to be evaluated at Juilliard, and when nothing came of that she sent me down to a friend of hers who was teaching at Curtis. Curtis didn’t accept men under the age of 20 at that time, since they felt [students] should have a little more time to mature before they started training—but despite that, they had me audition anyway, and they waived the age limit. So I went to Curtis at 18.”
After graduating from Curtis, getting his master’s in music from the Manhattan School of Music, and enjoying a stint as a baritone with the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists in Chicago, Philip took a break from the operatic stage to transition to the tenor repertoire.
“I always say that I’m not really a tenor. I’m a baritone emeritus called to higher and better things,” he jokes.
When Philip returned to the stage, he spent a year or two performing in the States before moving to Switzerland and Germany. He spent more than seven years in the United Municipal Theaters of Krefeld and Mönchengladbach in Germany.
Since returning to the States in 1995, he has worked as a free-lance singer and voice teacher, and is studying toward a doctorate of musical arts.
Philine, the youngest child, likewise began with the piano. She loved the classical music that surrounded her, but she didn’t perform classical music until after college.
“Through high school and college I did musical theatre and I sang in a rock band, which was a blast,” she recalls. “Erland was the one who took me to my first voice teacher, Ellen Rulau, to keep me from ruining my voice. He really encouraged me.
“However, when Erland died in my freshman year of college and my father died eight months later, I didn’t sing for two years. Then one weekend my mom went away to visit friends and I was alone—and I fell apart. It was then that I realized that I didn’t want to wake up at 50 and not have tried.”
Philine studied with several private teachers as she began to build her voice and her career. Being a younger singer with a big voice has been the most difficult hurdle to overcome.
“The trouble with being a big-voiced singer is that regional houses don’t know what to do with you. You’re either too big for the repertoire they’ve chosen for their season or they don’t do the bigger works—but at some point, even if you don’t get a lot of work, you have to give in to what you really are.
“I sing all the big stuff—Verdi, Strauss, Wagner—but it’s Strauss that I really love. One coach told me, ‘You light up when you sing Strauss!’ That’s who I am.”
Philine and Philip both carry this innate sense of self.
“There was a classmate of mine in grad school,” Philip says, “who always told me I’d be a professor someday. My mother told a story that the first day I went to kindergarten in the States, the teacher took me around the room and pointed out various objects, and told me what they were in English. When she was finished, I took her hand and took her around the room, and told her what the Dutch words were! I think I was always meant to be a teacher at some point.”
Although the two have performed in concert with each other on occasion, their separate and busy careers keep them from performing together more often. Philine is preparing to perform several roles around New York City this year and Philip is a DMA candidate at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Philip reflects once again on the value of being true to yourself, and of the pair’s recital experience.
“After 29 years in the trenches and a little time teaching at a college in the Midwest, I decided I would go back to school and get my doctorate, teach myself to teach better,” he says.
“Given the way things are in academia at this point, you’re better off having that doctorate. Even if you have a lot of experience, your experience doesn’t count as much as that sheepskin. That’s just the way it is. So I figured I’d get that sheepskin.
“It’s not as if I couldn’t learn something from going through the experience—God knows I’ve been learning quite a bit. I’ve found it very interesting and it’s something I’m enjoying doing. But yeah, we decided to do a recital in which we would do several operatic scenes. We did the duet from Tosca together and we did the scene (from Die Walküre) where Sieglinde first approaches Siegmund after Hunding has gone to bed, right to the end. Which I think is probably the very first time that Siegmund and Sieglinde have ever really been done by a full brother and sister team. I don’t think it’s ever been done before, as far as I know, anyway!”
“We’d love to be cast together,” says Philine. “We energize each other.”
For more information, visit Philine’s website at www.classicalsinger.com under singer web sites, or Philip’s website at www.geocities.com/petergrimes2. To see Erland and Philip’s filmographies, visit the Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com.
