Singers the world over are fortunate that Germany’s almost 80 opera companies recruit performers from everywhere. But British artists who migrate to Germany often disappear almost without trace as far as their native country is concerned. That was what happened to Richard Salter, who was the baritone of choice for contemporary opera throughout the German-speaking world. After years of taking the leads in new operas in Hamburg and Munich, Salter had been due to create the title role in Kepler, Philip Glass’s new opera about the 17th-century astronomer. Salter had only ever sung one operatic role in Britain: Chorebus in the highly successful Tim Albery staging for Opera North of Berlioz’s The Trojans in 1986.

Richard Jeffery Salter was born in Hindhead, Surrey, in 1943, and was a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, having been a chorister at Exeter Cathedral (1952-57) and then educated at Brighton College. He was one of the original King’s Singers, one of the most successful British male voice group of the past 40 years. But, as he wrote in their silver jubilee programme: “I have been singing in Germany for over 20 years . . . I would probably have been banished anyway as I don’t think I took it seriously enough.” He was extraordinarily modest, almost humble, about his success.

But he was always a great joker. He, Simon Carrington, Brian Kay, Alastair Hume and the rest were discussing with Mike Bremner, of Decca, what to call themselves if they got a record deal. Bremner’s idea was the King’s Singers for serious music and the King’s Swingers for close harmony. Salter, mindful that Peter Pears had set up a similar group called the Wilbye Singers, suggested the Wontbe Singers.

He wrote in that silver jubilee programme that his own style of performing was already too operatic and not precise enough, once concepts such as rhythm, precision, singing in tune and blending began to take over. “I could see the writing on the wall and began to look around for alternative sources of employment like doing contemporary music where one wouldn’t need to sing in tune.”

When he left Cambridge in 1965, Salter worked as a session singer to pay for a couple of years at the Royal College of Music. He had already shown his fellow choral scholars at King’s that he was serious about technique. Al Hume remembers his voice then as not the smoothest or creamiest. Neither was it specially liked by David Willcocks, whose prime commitment was to the concept of “blend”. Salter was his own man with clear ideas of what singing was about. But criticism from Willcocks made him buckle down to the challenge of developing a cast-iron vocal technique. By the time he left (after reading English) he could, according to Carrington, tackle almost anything with confidence, limitless breath and astonishing stamina and flexibility.

Salter kept in touch with his fellow King’s Singers with typically self-deprecating missives. A year ago he wrote about how difficult it was to retire: “In January I was asked to rescue a world premiere in Antwerp of an opera based on La Strada (not every day you get asked to imitate Anthony Quinn!). Anyway I decided to do it, truly terrifying but of course well paid. My goodness, memory! The next thing is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek in Hanover starting next week, and finally in June a Barbican appearance with Philip Glass’s Waiting for the Barbarians which I ‘created’ in Erfurt, then did in Amsterdam and then last January in Austin, Texas. I am considering this to be my real swan song.”

But in fact the work just kept coming. Salter died the day before he was due to start rehearsals at the Karlsruhe opera for the baritone lead in Britten’s Death in Venice and several other parts that he had never performed before. Waiting for the Barbarians at the Barbican earned him fine British notices as the Magistrate — not that those writing about him knew of his 37-year German career as a contracted member, most of that time, in operatic ensembles at Darmstadt, Kiel, Bremen and the Munich Gärtnerplatztheater where he was made Bayerischer Kammersänger in 1994.

The King’s Singers first performed in May 1968 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Almost simultaneously Salter was awarded the Richard Tauber prize of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society and went off to Vienna to study at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. In 1971 in Darmstadt Salter began his German operatic career in which he performed with distinction virtually all the roles in the classical baritone repertoire — in faultless German, vernacular then being the rule as at English National Opera.

Salter was brilliant at making atonal or modern music sound natural and acceptable. He was also a very quick student and superbly accurate. He played the title role in Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz, and scored a series of successes in works such as Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexiko (also at Hamburg State Opera), Manfred Trojahn’s Enrico (for Schwetzingen), Aribert Reimann’s Das Schloss (in which he played K), and Jörg Widmann’s Das Gesicht im Spiegel (as Milton — both the latter were at the Munich Opera Festival). He was Hamlet in Rihm’s Die Hamletmaschine in Hamburg, The Master in York Höller’s The Master and Margarita in Cologne, and Coupeau in Kleber’s Gervaise Macquart in Düsseldorf.

He also appeared as a guest at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and in Brussels, Frankfurt, Paris and Vienna. He was especially proud of his Beckmesser, which he played memorably in 1988 at the Palais Garnier in a Meistersinger staged by Herbert Wernicke borrowed from Hamburg. He took the title roles in Falstaff and Gianni Schicchi. He shone as Pizarro, Germont, Wozzeck, Dr Schön in Lulu, Escamillo, Belcore, Malatesta, Silvio, Tonio, Marcello, Sharpless, Michele, Fra Melitone, Renato, Posa, Luna, Rigoletto, Miller, Onegin, Don Giovanni, Almaviva, Guglielmo, Don Alfonso, Papageno, Lindorf/Dappertutto, Figaro, Dandini, Alindoro, Musiklehrer, Kaspar, Ottokar, Beckmesser and Wolfram. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in New York in 1999 in Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Requiem for a Young Poet. He was also a fine lieder singer — not least because of his flawless German.

Salter is survived by his wife, Deirdre, and a son and two daughters.

Richard Salter, baritone, was born on November 12, 1943. He died after a stroke on February 1, 2009, aged 65