Raimund Herincx obituary

The bass-baritone Raimund Herincx, who has died aged 90, was a tall, imposing man who made the most of his physical attributes by incarnating a range of characters from Count Almaviva (in The Marriage of Figaro) to Wotan in Wagner’s Ring – but he enjoyed particular success with villains such as Pizarro (Fidelio), Scarpia (Tosca) and Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust.

It was, in fact, as the title character, Mefistofele, in Boito’s opera that he had an early success with the Welsh National Opera (WNO) in 1957, going on to sing Germont (La Traviata) and the lead in Verdi’s Nabucco as well as Pizarro and Scarpia with that company.

He was a Sadler’s Wells regular, too, from 1957 to 1967, taking over 40 parts, the most notable of which were the dual roles of Creon and the Messenger in Oedipus Rex, the Count in The Marriage of Figaro and Nick Shadow in The Rake’s Progress. At Covent Garden, his roles included Escamillo (Carmen), Alfio (Cavalleria Rusticana) and Macbeth. His Metropolitan debut came in 1977 as Mathisen in Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète – and he sang frequently in Seattle, San Francisco and at other American houses.

He excelled also in contemporary repertoire, creating the roles of Segura in Malcolm Williamson’s Our Man in Havana (Sadler’s Wells, 1963), Faber in Michael Tippett’s The Knot Garden (Royal Opera House, 1970), the White Abbot in Peter Maxwell Davies’s Taverner (ROH, 1972) and the Governor in Hans Werner Henze’s We Come to the River (ROH, 1976).

He was no less well known for his work as a concert singer, in part because of his long association with Malcolm Sargent. Mendelssohn’s Elijah was a particular speciality.

Raimund was born in London to Florent Herincx, a Flemish tailor who had settled in Britain after the first world war, and his wife, Marie (nee Cheal). Following vocal studies in Belgium and Milan, Raimund based his career in the UK.

He made his stage debut with WNO in 1950 as Mozart’s Figaro – and by 1959 he was attracting attention as a striking Count Almaviva in the same opera, in a production at Sadler’s Wells. Andrew Porter in Opera magazine described his visual appearance as “patrician, charming, but dangerous, not a man to be trifled with”, while vocally the performance was “beautifully decisive, clearly focused, and admirable in tone”. Porter concluded that this was an outstanding Count “who could surely hold his own at Glyndebourne or in Vienna”.

He held his own, too, at English National Opera in appearances around Britain as Wotan and Hagen in Reginald Goodall’s Ring. His exceptional amplitude of tone stood him in good stead, as did his fine stage presence and superb diction, though occasionally the tone was heard to coarsen under pressure. He sang Wagner roles, too, in Seattle between 1977 and 1981, having previously appeared under Herbert von Karajan as Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Fafner in the Ring at the Salzburg Easter festival (1973-74). Other outstanding roles included Baron Prus in the British premiere of Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair under Charles Mackerras in 1964.

Fellow singers remember him as a larger than life but collegial and supportive presence. Jill Gomez, brought in at short notice to play the part of Flora, the ward of Herincx’s business tycoon Faber in the Royal Opera premiere of The Knot Garden, recalls the wicked sense of humour with which he lightened the atmosphere among the cast grappling with the opera’s seemingly impossible score.

With his wife, Astra Blair, a mezzo-soprano whom he married in 1954, he devoted considerable time and energy to helping children with special needs and disabilities. Gomez remembers how “they converted a large barn on their Bedfordshire estate to function as a gym, a concert hall and a space where the children were introduced to every noisy, cacophonous or clanging instrument they could lay their hands on.”

Herincx and his wife also founded the Quinville Concerts Trust. International musicians, singers and actors took part in its concerts, raising funds to provide equipment, specialised transport, holidays and leisure activities to children with disabilities. They also had three children of their own.

In the 1970s and 80s, Herincx became involved in a bizarre association with the pianist John Ogdon, whose mental health began to deteriorate sharply in 1973, leading to a breakdown and an eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Some years after a telephone conversation between the two, in which Ogdon asked for a fee for a charity concert, there occurred a series of encounters in the course of which Ogdon came to believe that Herincx was at the centre of a conspiracy to destroy his career. He even considered bringing a lawsuit, but Herincx too threatened to sue Ogdon if he did not desist from the obsessive accusations he made.

Charles Beauclerk, who details this extraordinary episode in his 2014 biography of Ogdon, describes Herincx as a tall, somewhat dominating figure, even in his 80s (when Beauclerk interviewed him): “a Falstaffian raconteur, prone to comic exaggeration”.

The relationship was not without its positive aspects, however, in that Ogdon, noting Herincx’s success in The Knot Garden, encouraged him to tackle more contemporary repertoire, even sending him sketches of operas and arias that he had written.

Herincx taught for 30 years at the North East of Scotland Music School in Aberdeen, Trinity College and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in Cardiff and the US.

His recordings included Oedipus Rex, Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage. In the Tippett recording, based on the 1968 Covent Garden revival under Colin Davis, in which he had made his house debut, he was suitably forceful as the blustering King Fisher. He featured also in recordings of unfamiliar British repertory such as Vaughan Williams’s operas The Pilgrim’s Progress and Sir John in Love, The Olympians by Arthur Bliss and Koanga by Delius.

Herincx is survived by Astra, their children, Nikki, Gemma and Gareth, and three grandchildren, Sam, James and Jack.