Tenor Wolfgang Schmidt has died at the age of 69.

Born in Melsungen near Kassel, he went on to study  voice at the Frankfurt Hochschule für Musik and won an award from the Hindemith Foundation for his special achievements.

While still a student he performed frequently in concert, traveling through all of western Europe as well as to Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Mexico, Venezuela and Japan.

However, his career took off with an engagement at the Städtebundtheater Hof, after which he went to the theaters in Kiel and Dortmund.

In 1988, he became an ensemble member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, where he has performed all the major roles of his voice category and in 1996 he was awarded the title of Kammersänger by the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. He remained with the company until 2021.

He was also well known at the Bayreuth Festival where he performed from 1992 to 2010. With the festival, he performed the title role “Tannhäuser,” Tristan, Mime, and the title role of “Siegfried,” which he sang eighteen times between 1994 and 2004.

He also performed at some of the major theaters in the world including the Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, Opéra de Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Semperoper Dresden, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin State Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Bregenz Festival and the Salzburg Festival.

Outside of Wagner, he performed such roles as Florestan in “Fidelio,” Max in Der Freischütz,” Bacchus in “Ariadne auf Naxos,” and  the Emperor in “Die Frau ohne Schatten.”

In his late career, he altered his voice type and developed a new repertoire that included Mime and Loge in “Das Rheingold” and “Siegfried,” Herodes in “Salome,” Peter Grimes, Jim Mahoney, and Schuysky in “Boris Godunov.”