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.

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).

Teaching

Her work as voice teacher always ran parallel to her singing. Her academic career at the Universities at Stellenbosch and Cape Town spanned fourteen years: from 1980 to 1993.

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 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).

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.

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.