"The tragic news of Stephen Gould's death fills me with dismay and deep sadness. Not only at the Deutsche Oper Berlin but also in New York, San Francisco and Vienna, I repeatedly had the pleasure of working with this wonderful artist. His interpretations of the great Wagner roles were moments of artistic fulfilment for me, because his portrayals of Siegfried, Tannhäuser and Tristan were filled with a deeply human understanding of the suffering of these characters. His Tristan had the colours of deep sad melancholy, his Tannhäuser one immediately believed the inner turmoil. It is barely a year since Stephen Gould was on stage with us in this role and the memory of those evenings is so present to me that his death seems even more incomprehensible. The opera world loses a great singer and person." (Sir Donald Runnicles) 
 

With Stephen Gould, the Deutsche Oper Berlin loses an artist with whom it has enjoyed almost twenty years of collaboration. Alongside the Bayreuth Festival and the Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin has been one of the most important venues for the US-American heroic tenor over the past twenty years. After his debut at the house in 2004 in the premiere of Korngold's DIE TOTE STADT, he presented mainly the great Wagner roles here: Siegfried and Parsifal, Tannhäuser and Tristan, but also Canio in Leoncavallo's PAGLIACCI as one of his rare excursions into the Italian repertoire in 2014. Now Gould, who had announced his stage farewell only a few weeks ago, has passed away at the age of only 61.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin will honour his memory.