He sang a wide repertoire encompassing over 100 roles,[1][2] including King Philipp in Verdi's Don Carlo and Hans Sachs in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
[1] Recommended by Herbert von Karajan,[4][3] he made his stage debut in 1965 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and was a member of the company for the next 30 years,[4] singing many leading bass roles and described as "a defining singer" of the house.
[1] The New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg, who had seen von Halem in a 1975 performance of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov at the Deutsche Oper described him as "a giant of a man with a voice to match".
He has everything the part demands: his warm, soft-grained bass flows easily through all Sachs's music, he points the words with a Lieder-singer's sensitivity, and his towering stature commands authority while conveying gentleness and humility.
[2] In June of that year he appeared at the Renaissance-Theater in Berlin with Karan Armstrong, René Kollo, and Ute Walther in a production of Ronald Harwood's Quartet, a play about four opera singers living in a retirement home for musicians.