The following information was sourced from http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Rensburg-Kobie-van.htm
KOBIE VAN RENSBURG, tenor
The South African tenor, Kobie van Rensburg, started his vocal training under Prof. Werner Nel while studying for graduate and post-graduate degrees in Law and International Politics, obtaining both cum laude, at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education.
He made his professional debut at the early age of twenty, singing Belmonte in Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail for the Roodepoort City Opera in 1991. It was soon followed by operatic engagements together with concert appearances in all the major South African cities. After winning several South African competitions as well as the concert section of the 1994 Pretoria International Singing competition, he left for Munich to further his vocal studies under Prof. Hanno Blaschke.
After an engagement at the Studio of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, he became a full-time member of the ensemble of Munich’s Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. He is also a regular guest at several other European opera houses including the Berlin State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, Montpellier, Basel, Luzern, Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon and the Opérá National du Rhin in Strasbourg. His expanding operatic repertoire already covers a wide spectrum of leading roles, including the early operas of Peri (Arcetro in Euridice) and Monteverdi (Orfeo in L’Orfeo and Nerone in L’Incoronazione di Poppea), the Baroque operas by Händel (Jupiter in Semele, Massimo in Ezio, Vitaliano in Giustino, etc), the famous Mozartian tenor roles (Idomeneo & Arbace in Idomeneo, Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Belfiore in La finta giardiniera, Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte, etc), Fenton in Verdi’s Falstaff, Der junge Seemann in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and several comic operas and operettas (Chateauneuf in Lortzing’s Zar und Zimmermann and Alfred in Die Fledermaus by Strauss, etc).
Although his concert repertoire ranges from music of the Renaissance to World Premieres of modern pieces, he specializes in music of the Baroque era.
Having already gained a considerable reputation as an interpreter of Händel, Bach and Monteverdi he has sung in such renowned festivals as the Salzburg Festival, the Schwetzingen Festival, the Karlsruhe Händel Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Halle Händel Festival, the Innsbruck Early Music Festival as well as the Luzern International Music Festival, and as far afield as Cairo and Buenos Aires (Teatro Colon).
He has also made several live television and radio broadcasts of opera and concerts in Europe and the USA under such famous conductors as Ivor Bolton, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Thomas Hengelbrock, Christopher Hogwood, René Jakobs, Lorin Maazel, Peter Schneider and Helmuth Rilling.
