Heldentenor Stephen Gould †: The Iron Man from Green Hill

2023-09-21 00:45:54

Time.news of an announced hero tenor’s death: On July 1st, the Bayreuth Festival announced “with its greatest regret” that Stephen Gould had to cancel his three roles Tristan, Tannhäuser and “Götterdämmerung” Siegfried “on urgent medical advice”. The 61-year-old American, who has been the most reliable tenor support on the Green Hill for a good 20 years, mastered the extraordinarily difficult roles in the summer of 2022 with the greatest calm, confidence and unimpaired vocal ability.

There were rumors of lung problems on the Tuschelkanals, but since the festival had found more than just an adequate replacement, it was quiet for the time being. Until his management announced on August 26th that he had to end his career “for health reasons”. He added that he wanted to continue working as a teacher and coach.

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But then, on September 6th, when the festival had just ended successfully, Stephen Gould announced almost soberly on his website that he was terminally ill: “I was diagnosed with bile duct cancer with complications. It is a cholangiocarcinoma, a fatal disease with a prognosis of a few to a maximum of ten months of life. There is no cure for this.”

Gould wrote that he waited until the end of the festival to publish this sad news. He didn’t want to hinder the enormous and outstanding efforts of the festival team. And finally, the Bayreuth Festival announced his death on September 19th.

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Stephen Gould, born in 1962, was one of the most important held tenors of the past decades. He was certainly the one you could rely on the most, his confident, metallic-soft tones rested on a sonorous baritone foundation.

A Stephen Gould showed no vocal weaknesses; Richard Wagner could have built his consecration play church on this tenor rock at any time. And it was already the second singing career of the son of a concert pianist and a Methodist priest, who was born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1962.

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He, who had studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and even stood in for Marilyn Horne in a Rossini role on the stage of the Los Angeles Opera, initially stuck with the musical because he didn’t really know what whether he was a baritone or a tenor. And so he sang, above all, the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s perennial bestseller “The Phantom of the Opera,” over 3,000 times.

For another Wagner hero, the former rock musician and decathlete Peter Hofmann, it was a decline from 1990 in Hamburg after the end of his Bayreuth career; for Stephen Gould it was the other way around. After eight years of en-suite musicals, he hung up his famous white mask, found an understanding teacher in the baritone John Fiorito from the New York Met ensemble and became a hero tenor. He made his debut as Florestan in Beethoven’s “Fidelio”. That was in Linz in 1999, when he was 38 years old.

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The heavy man with blue eyes and open, friendly features quickly climbed the opera career ladder. One of them, still fresh, but professional and experienced on stage, powerful, balanced and with bomb-proof top tones, was just what we had been waiting for in these lean hero tenor years. He quickly became one of the most sought-after Wagner singers in the world. When he made his debut at the Bavarian State Opera in 2001 in a smaller role, Stephen Gould soon played Erik, Siegmund, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Siegfried. He made his debut in Bayreuth in 2004 as Tannhäuser and also played Tristan in Katharina Wagner’s nihilistic, dark production in 2015.

Also in 2004, he sang for the first time at the Vienna State Opera, where he became Austrian Kammersänger in 2015. He was in demand everywhere when the male roles got high, long and mean. And he wasn’t just limited to Wagner, he also sang the ungrateful Bacchus in Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos”, the emperor in “Frau ohne Schatten” (recorded twice under Christian Thielemann, one of his favorite conductors), Britten’s Peter Grimes, Paul in Korngold’s “Toter Stadt” and Verdi’s Otello, and in concerts he often gave solos in Beethoven’s Ninth, Mahler’s Eighth or Schönberg’s Gurrelieder. He lived in Vienna and Washington and could also be thoughtful and melancholic, even though he had actually achieved everything as a singer.

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For Stephen Gould, who had a really close friendship with Katharina Wagner, Bayreuth was a very special place of work, but also of enchantment and peace, with almost 100 performances. You could experience this in an exemplary manner when he embodied the title role in Tobiaskrater’s unusually intelligent and funny, long-cult “Tannhäuser” production from 2019 to 2022 – as a sad clown. But in 2022 he also sang Tristan and Siegfried in the controversial “Götterdämmerung” by Valentin Schwarz, which was postponed at short notice for Covid protection reasons.

Stephen Gould, who recorded under Donald Runnicles, Christian Thielemann and Marek Janowski, wasn’t quite finished with the hero subject. And he, the frugal melody marathon runner, would certainly have had fun on stage as a character tenor. Like teaching, it was forbidden to him. “With him, the Bayreuth Festival and the entire opera world are losing an outstanding singer, actor, teacher, friend and valued colleague,” said the Bayreuth Festival. “We will miss him immensely, he will remain part of the festival family forever.”

The death of Iron Man from Green Hill is a sad day – and not just for Wagner lovers.