Nellie du Toit

Nellie du Toit (1929-2018) is a well-known South African soprano.

Biography

Petronella Magrita du Toit was born into a musical family on 17 December 1929 in the Pietersburg District, Northern Transvaal (now Northern Province) in what was then called the Union of South Africa.

Nellie du Toit began her primary school education in 1936 on Waterval Farm School where her father was teaching. At the age of seven she started with piano lessons and at the age of eight won a prize in singing at an eisteddfod in Pietersburg. In 1942, the Du Toit family moved to Potgietersrus where Nellie's mother, Johanna du Toit, became a piano and singing teacher. Her father, Chris du Toit, taught English at the Potgietersrus High School where his daughter started her secondary schooling, presumably in 1942. The family then moved to Pretoria when her father enrolled for a Master’s Degree at the University of Pretoria in 1944. From 1944 Nellie du Toit attended the Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool in Pretoria (Pretoria Afrikaans Girls’ High School) from where she matriculated in 1947 with music as one of her subjects.

On leaving school at the age of eighteen, she took singing lessons from Isobel McLaren. Following an accident, the nineteen-year-old Nellie decided to enroll at the South African College of Music in Cape Town for a three-year course in singing, as from February 1950.

She married Philip Crouse in July 1955. They had four children: Christine, Florence, Nelmarie and Phyllis. The Crouses moved to Pretoria early in 1957.

She died in Stellenbosch in August 2018.

Training

Her full-time music studies took place at the South African College of Music in Cape Town, from 1950 to 1952. Here her singing teacher Madame Adelheid Armhold and Gregorio Fiasconaro, head of the Opera School, were influential in laying the foundations for her career. She also undertook drama training under Leonard Schach and Rosalie van der Gucht. The latter training was particularly useful in her work as an opera singer.

Du Toit's repertoire of operas sung in student performances (1950-1953) included: Beatrice et Benedict (Hero); The Telephone (Lucy); The Medium (Monica); La serva padrona (Serpina); Gianni Schicchi (Lauretta); Suor Angelica (Angelica); Dido and Aeneas (Dido); Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna).

Du Toit also passed the University of South Africa’s Performer’s Licentiate in singing with great success in 1954, winning the UNISA overseas bursary, which gave her the opportunity for brief further studies in Vienna in the second half of 1955.

Teaching

Her work as voice teacher always ran parallel to her singing.

In 1957, Nellie du Toit took up a teaching post at Pretoria Afrikaans Girls’ High School (Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool Pretoria). Du Toit gave up her teaching post at the school after the first term of 1959 in order to be able to devote more time to her singing career.

When the Pretoria Conservatoire of Music was founded in 1960, Nellie du Toit was appointed principal lecturer in singing. She held this post for two years. After quitting her post at the Pretoria Conservatoire for Music at the end of 1962, she continued giving private singing lessons in her home, which was more compatible with raising a family.

Her academic career at the Universities at Stellenbosch and Cape Town spanned fourteen years: from 1980 to 1993. In January 1980, she followed Prof. George van der Spuy as head of the singing section at the Department of Music, University of Stellenbosch. At the end of 1986, du Toit left the Stellenbosch Music Department to become a lecturer in singing at her alma mater, the College of Music at the University of Cape Town, as from January 1987. As the daily commuting from Stellenbosch to and from Cape Town became too tedious for Du Toit, she returned to her former post as head of the singing section at the Stellenbosch Department of Music in 1990. At the end of 1993, at the age of sixty-four, Nellie du Toit retired from her full-time post at the University of Stellenbosch.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Making her career almost exclusively in South Africa, she became one of South Africa's most illustrious opera singers of the 1960's and 1970s. In addition she proved to be a highly sought after voice teacher for over 40 years.

While on tour in the United Kingdom in 1953-1954, du Toit performed in Così fan tutte (as Fiordiligi); Le nozze di Figaro (as Susanna); and La cenerentola (as Clorinde).

Du Toit auditioned for the SABC in Johannesburg about the middle of 1954, after which she received broadcasting opportunities which introduced her to a broader audience.

Du Toit sang in forty-five opera seasons for the Performing Arts Councils in the seventeen years between 1963 and 1979, when her opera career ended. In 1986, she returned to the opera stage as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. This was also her final farewell as opera singer.

Her repertoire of opera roles in South Africa (from 1957 to 1986) was as follows:

Asterion (Prinses)
Norma (Norma)
Carmen (Micaëla)
Lucia di Lammermoor (Lucia)
Martha (Lady Harriet Durham)
Andrea Chénier (Madeleine)
Faust (Marguerite)
Jenůfa (Jenůfa)
In the Drought (Elsie)
Der Wildschütz (Baronin Freimann)
Le nozze di Figaro (Contessa Almaviva)
Don Giovanni (Donna Annna)
Die Zauberflöte (Pamina)
Die Zauberflöte (Königin der Nacht)
Madama Butterfly (Cio-Cio-San)
Turandot (Liù)
La bohème (Mimì)
La bohème (Musetta)
Tosca (Tosca)
Prodaná nevěsta (Mařenka)
Der Rosenkavalier (Marschallin)
Il trovatore (Leonora)
La traviata (Violetta)
Otello (Desdemona)

Nellie du Toit also appeared in The Desert Song (as Margot), The Student Prince (as Kathy) and Die Fledermaus (as Rosalinde).

She also appeared in the 1968 film, Hoor My Lied.

Awards

She regarded as one of the world’s best “Butterflies” at the International Madame Butterfly Competition in Japan in 1970, and was awarded three Nederburg Opera Prizes.

On 8 February 1973 Nellie du Toit became the first woman to be awarded the Nederburg Opera Prize for her interpretation of the title role in CAPAB’s presentation of Madama Butterfly in the Nico Malan, Cape Town, in May 1972.

In 1973, she was one of the nominees for the Nederburg Opera Prize in the Orange Free State on account of her performance in Lucia di Lammermoor and again was nominated for the Nederburg Opera Prize in the Transvaal for her performance in Le nozze di Figaro.

In June 1975, she won the Transvaal Nederburg Opera Prize. It was awarded for her outstanding performance as Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor for PACT in March 1974. Nellie du Toit was also awarded the Nederburg Opera Prize for the Orange Free State for her portrayal of Tosca in the PACOFS production in March that year.

Nellie du Toit was awarded The Medal of Honour by the South African Academy of Arts and Sciences (30 September 1986); and an Honorary Doctorate in Music was conferred on her by Stellenbosch University on 8 December 1998.