, 'who sacrificed everything for her children's education and welfare'. He was raised in Marksville, Louisiana, a French-speaking region that he credited with helping his career in French opera.){kind=link}
He performed in more than 50 Ring Cycles and, a devout Christian, he toured evangelical churches and sang at Billy Graham rallies
Robert Hale, who has died the day after his 90th birthday, was an imposing American bass-baritone with a powerful voice; he was known for his interpretation of Wagner’s Wotan in opera houses around the world, the exception being the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where his sole appearance in the role was when he stepped in for Bryn Terfel in Die Walküre in 2005.
Hale had made his British debut in November 1982 singing Handel’s Messiah at the Barbican with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, with whom he recorded the work. His “rounded voice and forthright delivery were precisely matched to the music”, noted Alan Blyth in The Daily Telegraph.
Six years later the Telegraph’s Michael Kennedy found him an “imposing” Jokanaan in Peter Hall’s staging of Strauss’s Salome at Covent Garden when Hall’s wife Maria Ewing infamously bared all during the Dance of the Seven Veils. Others observed that his physique would secure him a modelling job if he decided to give up prophesying in the wilderness.
Hale’s Christian faith was important to him. He declined the title role in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele with New York City Opera because it depicts the witches’ sabbath, though in 1980 he sang the role at San Diego Opera. He formed the Hale and Wilder duo with his fellow singer Dean Wilder, touring American evangelical churches and providing music for Billy Graham’s crusades.