There are few operatic roles that have such a life-defining significance for their interpreters as Wagner's Wotan. Every singer who successfully interprets the father of the gods in Wagner's RING DES NIBELUNGEN remains in the public's memory above all in this role - so much so that all the other roles in their repertoire seem almost like partial aspects of this one. This is especially true of Robert Hale: for over twenty years the Texan, born in 1933, dominated the stages of the opera world as Wotan. The fact that he was able to do so was also due to his creating this part with Götz Friedrich in his new RING at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1986.

The Deutsche Oper under Götz Friedrich was his artistic home, Hale has always said, and it was here that he learned not only to sing his great operatic roles, but also to shape them in terms of words and acting. After his acclaimed debut as Wotan, which he was to embody here in 30 performances of the cycle until 2005, the house on Bismarckstraße became the artistic base for the bass-baritone: he was to appear on stage here on more than 170 evenings in the following two decades and quickly demonstrated his versatility as a singer in other great roles in his field: Pizarro, Amonasro and Scarpia, Wagner's Dutchman, the four villains in Offenbach's CONTES D'HOFFMANN and, as a quasi demonic and whimsical antithesis to Wagner's supreme god, Méphistophélès in Gounod's FAUST, in which he demonstrated an unexpected comic talent with electric guitar and devil costume.

Now Robert Hale has died in California one day after his 90th birthday. The Deutsche Oper Berlin mourns the loss of a singer-performer who gave it and its audiences many extraordinary evenings and will honour his memory.