One of the great singers of the 20th century. He was a favorite of mine. The only time I heard him live, I was fortunate enough to hear him sing Hans Sachs. He was not a huge personality, he was, rather, a singer of google intelligence, enormous dignity, and emotional restraint. Every vocal nuanced felt earned and apiece with itself. No grandstanding, and while probably as intelligent as someone like Fischer-Dieskau, none of DFD's pedantic bending over backwards to make musical points.
He exhibited a complete lack of vanity. Part of it is generational: the postwar generation put an enormous value in being understated and technically immaculate, but some of those artists always sounded to me as though they wanted credit for it (Abbado, Anda), but van Dam was born into nobility. Literally, he was a Baron. The understatedness seemed bred into his ethos. I think of him as the vocal equivalent to someone like Dohnanyi or de Larrocha. The understatement and intelligence never precluded warmth or communication, and there was never a lack of musical detail. Every bar had a nuance should you care to notice it. Self-effacement wasn't what he wanted to be, it was simply who he was.
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