The following is extracted from Volume III of the 1986 edition of South African Music Encyclopedia (J.P. Malan, ISBN 0 19 570363 4)
CORNELIUS BERNARDUS (DIRK) LOURENS, tenor, born 14 February 1910 in the district of Utrecht (Natal), died 6 September 1976 in Pretoria
Dirk Lourens grew up in the company of eight brothers and sisters on a farm near Vryheid, where he also attended school. For further development he transferred to Pretoria where he obtained the degree of B.A. at the University and the Teacher's Diploma at the Teachers' Training College (1931). Through extramural study he later obtained the degree of B.Ed at UNISA. While a student he was trained in elocution by Stephanie Faure at the University and in piano playing and singing in the city. A member of Gerrit Bon's church choir, he became acquainted with the technique of choral work and with some larger choral works.
His professional career as a school teacher started at the High School Kommando in Brakpan where he took charge of a school choir which won 18 gold medals at Eisteddfodau. He himself was "discovered" as a singer by Pieter de Waal, who introduced him to broadcasting, but in the meantime he had achieved personal successes at Eisteddfodau and was awarded his 25th gold medal in 1941. Adjudicators such as Con Duggan and the Englishman Walter Widdop advised him to make a career of singing and Widdop actually advised him to study the part of Radames in Aida. This hint achieved its purpose and in 1941 John Connell starred Lourens in this role. Until 1950, when he settled in Warm Baths to become a farmer, Dirk Lourens remained in the sphere of Connell's opera seasons.
During the war years and until 1950 he sang in Johannesburg in 15 different operas and also journeyed with productions to other centres concerned in Connell's vision of a National Opera: Pretoria, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein and Cape Town. Between operas, he sang with the City Orchestra, also with pianoforte accompaniment, in radio broadcasts and concerts, sometimes given in rural areas, and acquired a growing reputation as an Afrikaans lyric tenor. His voice was an asset for the expanding Afrikaans film industry and his acting and singing were used to good effect in Kom Saam Vanaand and Hier's Ons Weer. Highlights of his singing career were his participation in the Passion Play based on Da Vinci's Last Supper by Paganelli, a staff member of the SA College of Music in Cape Town, and the premiere of Stephen Eyssen's Boerwording, which was performed at the inauguration of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria (1949). The latter event took place one year after his return from Rome where he and his wife Susan had studied with the 72-year-old Vincenzo d'Allessandro (1947/48). Mrs Lourens (née Von Stapelberg) was a coloratura soprano who regularly accompanied her husband on his country tours, singing solos and duets with him.
Immediately before the Italian visit Dirk Lourens had resigned from school teaching and after his return he worked in the business of his father-in-law, while continuing his artistic career. In 1950 the family moved to Warm Baths, where Lourens farmed and taught English at the high school, so that concert tours had to be moved to school holidays. This was more or less the pattern until 1955 when he was seconded as a lecturer in Afrikaans and elocution to the Teachers' Training College in Heidelberg and (with the omission of the agricultural interest) thereafter until 1960, when medical advice stopped his singing career. The closure of the College in Heidelberg in 1966 caused his transfer to a similar position in Pretoria. He retired at the end of 1970.
