Soprano Jacqueline Van Quaille Dies at 88

By Daniel Okafor

Soprano Jacqueline Van Quaille died on Oct. 16 at 88. The news was confirmed by OperaWire, which announced her passing without citing a cause.

Van Quaille was a Ghent institution. Not the kind that gets plaques, perhaps, but the kind that keeps an opera house honest for decades.

Who was Jacqueline Van Quaille?

Born in Gentbrugge, Belgium, on Oct. 6, 1938, Van Quaille trained as a singer under Madame Teugels and studied lyric theatre with Karel Locufier at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent. She finished her studies in 1957 and went straight to work: the West Flemish Operetta Company in Kortrijk and Roeselare, plus the Royal Opera in Ghent.

The debut came fast. In 1958 she sang Pamina at the Royal Opera in Ghent — Mozart's ingénue in "The Magic Flute" — and the role became her signature.

What did she sing?

Her Ghent repertoire ran wide and heavy on the Italians. She performed regularly in:

• "Guillaume Tell"
• "Otello"
• "La Traviata"
• "La Forza del Destino"
• "La Fanciulla del West"
• "Tosca," in the title role

Operetta kept her busy too. Ghent audiences saw her in "Das Land des Lächelns," "Die Lustige Witwe" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" — the light repertoire where Belgian houses once did brisk business.

Later engagements took her to opera houses in France, Germany, Austria, Italy and New York City.

What came after the stage?

Van Quaille taught at the Music Academy in Ghent and privately. She also founded her own operetta company, "Aruna."

The screen got a share of her. She appeared in film adaptations of "Tristan und Isolde" (1970), Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" (1997) and "Eugène Onéguine" (2002).

She leaves three children. No memorial arrangements have been made public, according to OperaWire.

Her death closes a chapter on the Ghent school of singing — the conservatory-to-Royal-Opera pipeline that produced her, and that she spent her later years feeding as a teacher and company founder.