Deeply tormented: Philip Langridge as Gustav von Aschenbach in ‘Death in Venice’

Only two months ago, Philip Langridge was singing the Witch in Hansel and Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. It was the seasonal Christmas show and hard work for him: a heavy costume had been made to bulk him up in size, and at the climax of the evening he had to execute a triumphant dance along the top of a table covered in food – a treacherous escapade.

So full of vigour did he seem that news of his death on Friday after a short illness will have been doubly unexpected. Although he turned 70 in December during that run of performances, Langridge had barely begun to wind down his career. His diary had bookings at the world’s top opera houses for some years ahead and there were notable highlights to come, including a leading role in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera at London’s Royal Opera House on the life of American model Anna Nicole Smith.

It is typical of Langridge that he should still have been looking to new challenges. Born in 1939 in Hawkhurst, Kent, he was one of the postwar generation of tenors whose versatility would have astonished their predecessors. Equally adept at opera, oratorio or song recitals, he entered professional life just at the point when the explosion of interest in early music was about to happen and contemporary music was going off in many diverse directions.

Unabashed, Langridge was open to any and every opportunity. It helped that, after studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, he started his career as a violinist, giving him a wider perspective on music than most singers. In the early days, he said it was his ability to read demanding contemporary music that kept work coming in and the bank manager happy. Then engagements with the conductors Riccardo Chailly and Claudio Abbado in the 1970s opened the door to an international career.

In an interview with the Financial Times late last year, Langridge said: “I think I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had a great voice in the sense that Pavarotti did, but I have had a voice that has been useful in pretty well every period of music.” His roles in the opera house left no area of the repertoire unexplored. An early attempt at the Duke in Rigoletto convinced him that he did not have the right vocal colours for Verdi, but he was proud that he could manage a very high role such as Rossini’s Otello without forcing. He loved Monteverdi, which he found “extraordinary music-drama”, was equally at home in the Czech operas of Janácek and the Russian epics of Musorgsky, and even tackled Wagner – Loge in Das Rheingold – with success in recent years.

For all that, Langridge is most likely to be remembered for his outstanding performances in 20th-century operas. A particular challenge was taking on the all-important tenor roles in Britten’s operas so soon after Peter Pears, for whom they had been personally tailored. Langridge said that he faced some opposition at first, but audio and video recordings of his portrayals, especially Peter Grimes and Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice, will testify to how deeply he penetrated the minds of these tormented characters.

He also created new roles himself, most notably in a series of operas by Harrison Birtwistle, including The Mask of Orpheus and The Second Mrs Kong. Birtwistle had recently composed a new song especially for his 70th birthday recital at the Wigmore Hall.

Philip Langridge was married to Irish mezzo-soprano Ann Murray and, among his four children from two marriages, one son is the opera director Stephen Langridge.