Harry Geraerts

Harry Geraerts (born 22 August 1945) is a Dutch tenor. His repertoire includes the great oratorios, baroque operas, ensemble music and Lieder, especially in the field of Renaissance and Baroque music.

Life Born in Utrecht, Geraerts attended school in Utrecht and sang in the boys' choir of St. Martin's Cathedral, Utrecht. In 1972, he became the first private student of Max van Egmond in Amsterdam, as at that time there were no courses of study for early music majoring in singing. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the baroque ensemble "De Egelentier". For about three decades he performed at the major early music festivals. He regularly held master classes at the University of Michigan in the US.

Geraerts has an international reputation and has performed in almost all European countries, as well as in the US and Israel. In the field of early music, he has appeared as a singer in baroque operas, oratorios and in ensemble music. As a lieder singer, he has recorded the Winterreise by Franz Schubert with Ludger Rémy on the fortepiano.

His numerous radio performances and recordings include important works by Johann Sebastian Bach such as some of his cantatas, the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion with Johan van der Meer. His clear voice is appreciated "without vocal equalization and without vibrato, i.e. always razor sharp on the tone", and his lively declamation, which is strongly influenced by the musical rhetoric of the Baroque. Konrad Klek praises Geraerts as the oratorio singer of Bach's great vocal works: "I have never experienced such German linguistic power with any German singer.

As a singer he has worked with well-known European ensembles such as the Groningse Bachvereniging, the Fiori musicali, the Musicalische Compagney, the Ensemble Weser-Renaissance Bremen, Leonhardt-Consort and the Alsfelder Vokalensemble.

In 2003, he moved from his hometown Utrecht to the South of France, where he had the dilapidated St.-Guiraud Castle restored in Castelnau-Barbarens near Auch. In the Auch Cathedral he gave several concerts with the titular organist Anton Stiller on the local baroque organ from 1694 and the vocal ensemble Capella Auscitensis. In Peter Bubmann, Eckart Liebau (ed.): Die Ästhetik Europas. Ideen und Illusionen. transcript, Bielefeld 2016, ,.