The following is extracted from Volume II of the 1986 edition of South African Music Encyclopedia (J.P. Malan, ISBN 0 19 570285 9)
JACOBA SUSANNA (NUNEZ) HOLTZHAUSEN, soprano, born 22 May 1886 on the farm "Die Post" near Port Elizabeth, died 30 April 1974 at Middleburg (Transvaal)
Nunez Holtzhausen was a direct descendant of the first Holtzhausen who emigrated from Germany to South Africa in 1730. Just before the Anglo-Boer war her father trekked from the Cape to the Transvaal and although technically a British subject, he joined the Boer forces. Her mother was interned in a concentration camp at Germiston during the war. Nunez's sporadic education was resumed after the war and in 1905 she studied in Stellenbosch for a music teacher's diploma at the newly-created conservatoire of FW Jannasch. Properly equipped in 1908 she taught on the Witwatersrand where she became interested in voice production. After 1915 Aimée Parkerson was in charge of her voice training and at a later stage she also had lessons from Burns-Walker. When she had completed her 37th year (1924), she spent two years at the Kochen School of Singing in Berlin, made her debut there in 1926 in the Schiller Hall, and also sang in the Netherlands. In this same year she considered the possibility of an opera career, but returned to South Africa where she immediately went on a tour of the Western Province, accompanied by the elocutionist Stephanie Faure, and received glowing press notices. Die Burger wrote: "She must sing, sing often, and sing culture into South Africa" (quoted by Louise Behrens in Sarie Marais, 3 Aug 1960). After a further concert with the Durban City Orchestra, she toured in Natal with them and also visited Johannesburg and Pretoria for a few concerts. Shortly afterwards she organised her own tour in South African centres and in Rhodesia, where she typically included the Daisyfield Afrikaans orphanage on her itinerary.
Complete identification with the historical development of the Afrikaner nation had been a pronounced motive of Nunez Holtzhausen's career since her return to South Africa. For the fortieth birthday celebrations of Johannesburg in 1926, she trained a children's choir which participated in the historical pageant clothed in Voortrekker costume, and she herself often preferred the same costume during the 1930s when she sang in public. She was similarly enthusiastic about Afrikaans folkdancing, among children at first, but eventually extended to include adults. In 1933 she trained an adult group for a demonstration given at a cultural meeting in the Pretoria City Hall. Pollie Roberson (spelled thus), her piano accompanist, acted as her advisor in this work. From the same patriotic motive rose her enthusiasm for an Afrikaans Music Club (1941), of which she became the first musical director, and for the incipient Afrikaans art song. She recorded Lettie Joubert's Lentesang for HMV at the request of the FAK, including other songs, interpreted by herself and Stephen Eyssen on the reverse side of the record. Lacking suitable Afrikaans songs, she had the poet AG Visser translate some of her repertoire pieces into Afrikaans and included these with traditional Afrikaans 'picnic songs' on her concert programmes. She did, in fact, use her talent "to sing culture into South Africa", notably among her Afrikaans compatriots.
Besides coloratura favourites from Norma, La Traviata and Die Zauberflöte, Nunez also included Ophelia's mad scene from Hamlet (Thomas) and extracts from Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Rosenkavalier (R Strauss) in her programmes, combining coloratura exhibitionism with genuine drama and songs. An obvious choice were the songs about nightingales, which displayed her coloratura abilities to advantage. An interesting novelty at the time was her practice of singing opera arias in appropriate costumes.
For a period of nine years she taught singing at the primary school Pretoria-Oos (1940-49) and produced a children's operetta almost every year. One of her successes was Boerenooientjie (an Afrikaans translation of The Milkmaid) which she produced with a choir of 400 children, all dressed in Voortrekker costumes. On other occasions she arranged children's concerts, with the assistance of Lettie Joubert and Judith Brent-Wessels. Her other activities include lecturing to HED students on school music (one year only) and adjudicating at eisteddfodau.
From 1949 to 1953 Nunez Holtzhausen bred Ayrshires on the farm "Mizpah" in the Belfast district but during the latter year she returned to Pretoria. From her first marriage to GA Hattingh two sons were born, of whom the eldest became a farmer in the Middelburg (Transvaal) district. She resided on his farm until her death.
