Obituary: Bass Raimund Herincx Dies At 90

By Francisco Salazar

Bass Raimund Herincx has passed away at the age of 90.

The British bass, born in London on August 23, 1927, began his career performing at the Welsh National Opera and Sadler’s Wells Opera, singing in over 400 performances and 40 major roles. He would later be engaged for guest appearances in the opera houses of Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, as well as at Rome, Madrid, Athens, Lisbon, and Stockholm before making his acclaimed Royal Opera House debut in 1968, where he would become a mainstay.

Between the 1960s and 1970s, the Royal Opera would be his company and he would go on to perform roles in Italian, English, German, Russian and French, in addition to three world premieres such as “The Knot Garden” by Michael Tippett on Dec. 2, 1970 which was conducted by Sir Colin Davis and directed by Sir Peter Hall.

In London, he also made a name for himself at the English National Opera in roles such as Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It would be a role that he took to numerous European and North and South American venues.

In 1977, he would make his Metropolitan Opera debut in “Le Prophete” and would only perform 16 times with the company. He, however, did perform extensively around the U.S in Wagnerian roles.

After retiring from the stage he became well known as a voice teacher and therapist and devoted some of his time to cancer research, guiding and helping patients with voice and throat problems. He went on to teach at the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, and the Universities of Cardiff and Aberdeen as well as at the Universities of Washington and California (UCLA) and lectured for the Yale Club and the Juilliard School.

Thankfully a number of recordings his exist. Among the repertoire that he recorded is Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex,” Tippett’s “The Midsummer Marriage” and “The Knot Garden,” Handel’s “Messiah,” and Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” among others.

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