Robert Hale, bass-baritone renowned for his Wagner interpretations – obituary

Robert Hale, who has died the day after his 90th birthday, was an imposing American bass-baritone with a powerful voice; he was known for his interpretation of Wagner’s Wotan in opera houses around the world, the exception being the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where his sole appearance in the role was when he stepped in for Bryn Terfel in Die Walküre in 2005.

Hale had made his British debut in November 1982 singing Handel’s Messiah at the Barbican with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, with whom he recorded the work. His “rounded voice and forthright delivery were precisely matched to the music”, noted Alan Blyth in The Daily Telegraph.

Six years later the Telegraph’s Michael Kennedy found him an “imposing” Jokanaan in Peter Hall’s staging of Strauss’s Salome at Covent Garden when Hall’s wife Maria Ewing infamously bared all during the Dance of the Seven Veils. Others observed that his physique would secure him a modelling job if he decided to give up prophesying in the wilderness.

Hale’s Christian faith was important to him. He declined the title role in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele with New York City Opera because it depicts the witches’ sabbath, though in 1980 he sang the role at San Diego Opera. He formed the Hale and Wilder duo with his fellow singer Dean Wilder, touring American evangelical churches and providing music for Billy Graham’s crusades.

Back in Europe, Hale completed more than 50 Ring Cycles, dozens of extra Walküres and at least 150 Flying Dutchmen, taking the often-chaotic conditions of opera houses in his stride. “Going in without much rehearsal brings out your professionalism,” he told Opera News. “You need to know your craft. They’re depending on you.”

Robert Hale was born in Kerrville, Texas, on August 22 1933, one of four children of John Hardy Hale, a bugler who survived being gassed in the First World War, and his wife Ollie Mae (née Saucier), “who sacrificed everything for her children’s education and welfare”. He was raised in Marksville, Louisiana, a French-speaking region that he credited with helping his career in French opera.

The family later moved to Oklahoma City, where he studied music at Bethany Nazarene College. He served with the US army in Germany, the scene of many future operatic successes, before enrolling at Oklahoma University, where he had roles in South Pacific, Carmen and Cavalleria rusticana.

Hale began his professional career as a recitalist, and sang under the baton of Aaron Copland in a programme of “old American songs”, but in 1967 he made his debut in Puccini’s La bohème for City Opera. After a decade as a company stalwart he arrived in Europe, starting in Wuppertal in 1978 with the title role in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, the part he sang in 1990 for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

His only other role at Covent Garden was Orestes in Strauss’s Elektra, which he first sang there in 1990. That same year British audiences finally heard his Wotan when BBC 2 and Radio 3 broadcast Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Ring Cycle from Bavarian State Opera.

During the 1950s Hale was married to Sherry, with whom he had three sons. With his second wife, the Danish soprano Inga Nielsen, he performed in Tosca and Salome, prompting her to observe: “You could say I have many ways of killing my husband on stage.”

In 2006 he married Marina Poplavskaya, a Russian soprano 44 years his junior; they had met in The Flying Dutchman. All three were dissolved, and in 2009 he married the soprano Julie Davies, who survives him. They sang in US churches as Hale & Davies: Celebration of Song.

Robert Hale, born August 22 1933, died August 23 2023