The baritone Richard Salter, who has died aged 65, only appeared once on the British operatic stage - in 1986, as Chorebus in The Trojans at Opera North. Yet he was famous in Germany, made Bayerischer Kammersänger in 1994, and was the baritone of choice throughout the German-speaking world for contemporary opera. He was the first Lenz in Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz at Hamburg State Opera and starred in Rihm's Die Eroberung von Mexiko, Manfred Trojahn's Enrico, Aribert Reimann's Das Schloss (he was K) and Jörg Widmann's Das Gesicht im Spiegel - the latter two at the Munich Opera Festival. Salter died in Karlsruhe, the day before starting rehearsals for Britten's Death in Venice. He had been cast as Kepler in Philip Glass's new opera about the astronomer, opening next autumn in Linz and at the Brooklyn Academy.