With his distinctive profile and memorable stage presence, he made a powerful impression in many roles, from Wagner, Verdi and Mozart, to Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Times wrote that he embodied "all the virtues that make the complete artist – vocal beauty and technique, musicianship, language, dramatic ability, stylistic authority".
He also sang with Welsh National Opera, beginning in 1969, in the leading bass roles in La Cenerentola, Rigoletto, Macbeth, Nabucco, The Barber of Seville, Aida and Ernani.
He later sang Leporello with English National Opera (Sadler's Wells's new name), as well as the Grand Inquisitor and later King Philip II in Don Carlos (Verdi), the title role in Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky), Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier (Richard Strauss), the title role in Don Quichotte (Massenet), Count Almavivia in The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Procida in I Vespri Siciliani (Verdi), Mazeppa (Tchaikovsky), Padre Guardiano in La forza del destino (Verdi), Mephistofeles in both Gounod's and Berlioz's versions of Faust, Mustafà (Rossini), and one of his most admired parts, Claggart in Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, among many other roles.
[2] Overseas, he appeared at the Opéra National de Paris and elsewhere in France, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Wexford Festival in Ireland, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, San Diego Opera (where he sang his first Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier in 1976), the Metropolitan Opera (where he finally made his debut in 1987 as Count des Grieux in Massenet's Manon), Boston, Miami and Seattle.
[1] His concert performances included Beethoven's Ninth symphony, Bruckner's Mass in F minor, Dvořák's Te Deum, and Berlioz's L'enfance du Christ and The Damnation of Faust (with Sir Simon Rattle).
Also at ENO, he sang the Man Without a Conscience in Nigel Osborne's Goya opera Terrible Mouth, and King Hildebrand in Ken Russell's much criticised production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Princess Ida.