Baritone
Encyclopedia
Baritone is a type of male singing voice
that lies between the bass
and tenor
voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep (or heavy) sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C
to the F above middle C (i.e. F2
–F4) in choral music, and from the second G below middle C to the G above middle C (G2 to G4) in operatic music, but can be extended at either end.
polyphonic
music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice.
Baritones took roughly the range we know today at the beginning of the 18th century but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into the 19th century. Indeed, many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles (or bass-baritone
parts in modern parlance). Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel
. The greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
. They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro
, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte
, Papageno in The Magic Flute
and the Don in Don Giovanni
.
The bel canto
style of vocalism which arose in Italy in the early 19th century supplanted the castrato
-dominated opera seria
of the previous century. It led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. Traditionally, basses in operas had been cast as authority figures such as a king or high priest; but with the advent of the more fluid baritone voice, the roles allotted by composers to lower male voices expanded in the direction of trusted companions or even romantic leads—normally the province of tenors. More often than not, however, baritones found themselves portraying villains.
The principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be:
The prolific operas of these composers, plus the works of Verdi's maturity, such as Un ballo in maschera
, La forza del destino
, Don Carlos
/Don Carlo, the revised Simon Boccanegra
, Aida
, Otello
and Falstaff
, blazed many new and rewarding performance pathways for baritones.
Figaro in Il barbiere is often called the first true baritone role. However, Donizetti and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasise the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. Further pathways opened up when the musically complex and physically demanding operas of Richard Wagner
began to enter the mainstream repertory of the world's opera houses during the second half of the 19th century.
The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini
(1800–1876). He was a famous Don Giovanni
in Mozart's eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty, flexibility and smooth tonal emission, which are the hallmarks of a bel canto
singer. Tamburini's range, however, was probably closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern "Verdi baritone". His French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie
, who was a mainstay of the Paris Opera
between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell. Dabadie sang in Italy, too, where he was the first Belcore in 1832.
The most important of Tamburini's Italianate successors were all Verdians. They included Giorgio Ronconi
, who created the title role in Verdi's Nabucco; Felice Varesi
, who created the title roles in Verdi's Macbeth
and Rigoletto
and was the first Germont in La traviata
; Antonio Superchi
, who created Don Carlo is Verdi's Ernani
; Francesco Graziani
, who created Don Carlo in Verdi's La forza del destino; Leone Giraldoni
, who created Renato in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and was the first Simon Boccanegra; Enrico Delle Sedie
, who was London's first Renato; Adriano Pantaleoni, who was renowned for his performances as Amonasro in Aida and in other Verdi works at La Scala
, Milan; Francesco Pandolfini, whose singing at La Scala during the 1870s was praised by Verdi; Antonio Cotogni
, a much lauded singer in Milan, London and Saint Petersburg, the first Italian Posa in Verdi's Don Carlo and later a great vocal pedagogue, too; and, Giuseppe Del Puente, who sang Verdi to acclaim in the United States.
Among the non-Italian born baritones that were active in the third-quarter of the 19th century, Tamburini's mantle as an outstanding exponent of Mozart and Donizetti's music was probably taken up most faithfully by a Belgian, Camille Everardi
, who later settled in Russia and taught voice. In France, Paul Barroilhet
succeeded Dabadie as the Paris opera's best known baritone. Like Dabadie, he also sang in Italy and created an important Donizetti role: in his case, Alphonse in La Favorite
(in 1840).
Luckily, the gramophone
was invented early enough to capture on disc the voices of the top Italian Verdi and Donizetti baritones of the last two decades of the 19th century, whose operatic performances were characterized by considerable re-creative freedom and a high degree of technical finish. They included Mattia Battistini
(known as the "King of Baritones"), Giuseppe Kaschmann (born Josip Kašman
and who, atypically for his kind, sang Wagner's Telramund and Amfortas not in Italian but in German, at the Bayreuth Festival
, in the 1890s); Giuseppe Campanari
; Antonio Magini-Coletti
; Mario Ancona
(chosen to be the first Silvio in Pagliacci
); Giuseppe Pacini; and, Antonio Scotti
, (who came to the Met from Europe in 1899 and remained on the roster of singers until 1933!). Meanwhile, Antonio Pini-Corsi
was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between circa 1880 and World War I
. He revelled in comic opera parts by Rossini, Donizetti and Paer
, among others. In 1893, he created the part of Ford in Verdi's last opera, Falstaff.
Notable among their contemporaries were the cultured and technically adroit French baritones Jean Lassalle (hailed as the most accomplished baritone of his generation), Victor Maurel
(the creator of Verdi's Iago, Falstaff and Tonio in Leoncavallo
's Pagliacci), Paul Lhérie
(the first Posa in the revised, Italian-language version of Don Carlos
), and Maurice Renaud
(a singing-actor of the first magnitude). Lassalle, Maurel and Renaud enjoyed superlative careers on either side of the Atlantic and left a valuable legacy of recordings. Five other significant Francophone baritones who recorded, too, during the early days of the gramophone/phonograph were Léon Melchissédec
and Jean Note
of the Paris Opera and Gabriel Soulacroix
, Henry Albers and Charles Gilibert of the Opéra-Comique. The Quaker baritone David Bispham
, who sang in London and New York between 1891 and 1903, was the leading American male singer of this generation. He also recorded for the gramophone.
The oldest-born star baritone known for sure to have made solo gramophone discs was the Englishman Sir Charles Santley
(1834–1922). Santley made his operatic debut in Italy in 1858 and became one of Covent Garden's leading singers. He was still giving critically acclaimed concerts in London in the 1890s. The composer of Faust
, Charles Gounod
, wrote Valentine's aria "Even bravest heart" for him in 1864. A couple of primitive cylinder recordings dating from about 1900 have been attributed by collectors to the dominant French baritone of the 1860s and 1870s, Jean-Baptiste Faure
(1830–1914), the creator of Posa in Verdi's original French-language version of Don Carlos. It is doubtful, however, that Faure (who retired in 1886) made the cylinders. However, a contemporary of Faure's, Antonio Cotogni, (1831–1918)—probably the foremost Italian baritone of his generation—can be heard, briefly and dimly, at the age of 77, on a duet recording with the tenor Francesco Marconi
. (Cotogni and Marconi had sung together in the first London performance of Amilcare Ponchielli
's La Gioconda
in 1883, performing the roles of Barnaba and Enzo respectively.)
There are 19th century references in the musical literature to certain baritone sub-types. These include the light and tenorish baryton-Martin, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin
(1768/69–1837), and the deeper, more powerful Heldenbariton (today's bass-baritone) of Wagnerian opera.
Perhaps the most accomplished Heldenbaritons of Wagner's day were August Kindermann
, Franz Betz
and Theodor Reichmann. Betz created Hans Sachs
in Die Meistersinger
and undertook Wotan in the first Der Ring des Nibelungen
cycle at Bayreuth, while Reichmann created Amfortas in Parsifal
, also at Bayreuth. Lyric German baritones sang lighter Wagnerian roles such as Wolfram in Tannhäuser
, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde
or Telramund in Lohengrin
. They made large strides, too, in the performance of art song and oratorio, with Franz Schubert
favouring several baritones for his vocal music, in particular Johann Michael Vogl
.
Nineteenth-century operetta
s became the preserve of lightweight baritone voices. They were given comic parts in the tradition of the previous century's comic bass by Gilbert and Sullivan
in many of their productions. This did not prevent the French master of operetta, Jacques Offenbach
, from assigning the villain's role in The Tales of Hoffmann to a big-voiced baritone for the sake of dramatic effect. Other 19th-century French composers like Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz
, Camille Saint-Saëns
, Georges Bizet
and Jules Massenet
wrote attractive parts for baritones, too. These included Nelusko in L'Africaine
(Meyerbeer's last opera), Mephistopheles in La damnation de Faust (a role also sung by basses), the Priest of Dagon in Samson and Delilah
, Escamillo in Carmen
, Zurga in Les pêcheurs de perles
, Lescaut in Manon
, Athanael in Thaïs
and Herod in Hérodiade
. Russian composers included substantial baritone parts in their operas. Witness the title roles in Peter Tchaikovsky
's Eugene Onegin
(which received its first production in 1879) and Alexander Borodin
's Prince Igor
(1890).
Mozart continued to be sung throughout the 19th century although, generally speaking, his operas were not revered to the same extent that they are today by music critics and audiences. Back then, baritones rather than high basses normally sang Don Giovanni - arguably Mozart's greatest male operatic creation. Famous Dons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries included Scotti and Maurel (see the photograph accompanying this article), as well as Portugal's Francisco d'Andrade and Sweden's John Forsell
.
baritones included such major singers in Europe and America as the polished Giuseppe De Luca
(the first Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
), Mario Sammarco
(the first Gerard in Andrea Chénier
), Eugenio Giraldoni
(the first Scarpia in Tosca
), Pasquale Amato
(the first Rance in La fanciulla del West
), Riccardo Stracciari
(noted for his richly attractive timbre
) and Domenico Viglione-Borghesi, whose voice was exceeded in size only by that of the lion-voiced Titta Ruffo
. Ruffo was the most commanding Italian baritone of his era or, arguably, any other era. He was at his prime from the early 1900s to the early 1920s and enjoyed success in Italy, England and America (in Chicago and later at the Met).
Between them, these baritones established the echt performance style for baritones undertaking roles in verismo
operas. The chief verismo composers were Giacomo Puccini
, Ruggero Leoncavallo
, Pietro Mascagni
, Alberto Franchetti
, Umberto Giordano
and Francesco Cilea
. Verdi's works continued to remain popular, however, with audiences in Italy, the Spanish-speaking countries, the United States and the United Kingdom and, interestingly enough, Germany, where there was a major Verdi revival in Berlin between the Wars.
Outside the field of Italian opera, an important addition to the Austro-German repertory occurred in 1905. This was the premiere of Richard Strauss
's Salome
, with the pivotal part of John the Baptist assigned to a baritone. (The enormous-voiced Dutch baritone Anton van Rooy
, a Wagner specialist, sang John when the opera reached the Met in 1907). Then, in 1925, Germany's Leo Schützendorf created the title baritone role in Alban Berg
's harrowing Wozzeck
. In a separate development, the French composer Claude Debussy
's post-Wagnerian masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande
featured not one but two lead baritones at its 1902 premiere. These two baritones, Jean Périer
and Hector Dufranne
, possessed contrasting voices. (Dufranne — sometimes classed as a bass-baritone — had a darker, more powerful instrument than did Périer, who was a true baryton-Martin.)
Characteristic of the Wagner
ian baritones of the 20th century was a general progression of individual singers from higher-lying baritone parts to lower-pitched ones. This was the case with Germany's Hans Hotter
. Hotter made his debut in 1929. As a young singer he appeared in Verdi and created the Commandant in Richard Strauss's Friedenstag
and Olivier in Capriccio
. By the 1950s, however, he was being hailed as the top Wagnerian bass-baritone in the world. His Wotan was especially praised by critics for its musicianship. Other major Wagnerian baritones have included Hotter's predecessors Leopold Demuth, Anton van Rooy
, Hermann Weil, Clarence Whitehill
, Friedrich Schorr
, Rudolf Bockelmann
and Hans Hermann Nissen. Demuth, van Rooy, Weil and Whitehill were at their peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries while Schorr, Bockelmann and Nissen were stars of the 1920s and 1930s.
In addition to their heavyweight Wagnerian cousins, there was a plethora of baritones with more lyrical voices active in Germany and Austria during the period between the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 and the end of WW2 in 1945. Among them were Joseph Schwarz (a vocal virtuoso), Heinrich Schlusnus
(the owner of an exceptionally beautiful voice), Herbert Janssen
, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender
, Karl Schmidt-Walter and Gerhard Hüsch
. Their abundant inter-war Italian counterparts included, among others, Carlo Galeffi
, Giuseppe Danise, Enrico Molinari, Umberto Urbano, Cesare Formichi
, Luigi Montesanto, Apollo Granforte
, Benvenuto Franci, Renato Zanelli
(who switched to tenor roles in 1924), Mario Basiola, Giovanni Inghilleri, Carlo Morelli (the Chilean-born younger brother of Renato Zanelli) and Carlo Tagliabue
. (The last named baritone retired as late as 1958.)
One of the best known Italian Verdi baritones of the 1920s and '30s, Mariano Stabile
, sang Iago and Rigoletto and Falstaff (at La Scala
) under the baton of Arturo Toscanini
. Stabile also appeared in London, Chicago and Salzburg. He was noted more for his histrionic skills than for his voice, however. Stabile was followed by Tito Gobbi
, a versatile singing-actor capable of vivid comic and tragic performances during the years of his prime in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. He learned more than 100 roles in his lifetime and was mostly known for his roles in Verdi and Puccini operas, including appearances as Scarpia opposite soprano Maria Callas
as Tosca at Covent Garden
.
Gobbi's competitors included Gino Bechi
, Giuseppe Valdengo
, Paolo Silveri
, Giuseppe Taddei
, Ettore Bastianini
and Giangiacomo Guelfi
. Another of Gobbi's contemporaries was the Welshman Geraint Evans
, who famously sang Falstaff at Glyndebourne
and created the roles of Mr. Flint
and Mountjoy
in works by Benjamin Britten
. Some considered his best role to have been Wozzeck. The next significant Welsh baritone was Bryn Terfel
. He made his premiere at Glyndebourne in 1990 and went on to build an international career as Falstaff and, more generally, in the operas of Mozart and Wagner.
An outstanding group of virile-voiced American baritones appeared in the 1920s. The younger members of this group were still active as recently as the late 1970s. Outstanding among its members were the Met
-based Verdians Lawrence Tibbett
(a compelling, rich-voiced singing-actor), Richard Bonelli
, John Charles Thomas
, Robert Weede
, Leonard Warren
and Robert Merrill
. They sang French opera, too, as did the American-born but Paris-based baritone of the 1920s and '30s, Arthur Endreze.
Also to be found singing Verdi roles at the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna Opera during the late 1930s and the 1940s was the big-voiced Hungarian baritone, Sandor (Alexander) Sved.
The leading Verdi baritones of the 1970s and '80s were probably Italy's Renato Bruson
and Piero Cappuccilli
, America's Sherrill Milnes
, Sweden's Ingvar Wixell
and the Romanian baritone Nicolae Herlea
. At the same time, Britain's Sir Thomas Allen was considered to be the most versatile baritone of his generation in regards to repertoire, which ranged from Mozart to Verdi, through French and Russian opera, to modern English music. Another British baritone, Norman Bailey, established himself internationally as a memorable Wotan and Hans Sachs. He had, however, a distinguished if lighter-voiced Wagnerian rival during the 1960s and 1970s in the person of Thomas Stewart of America. Other notable post-War Wagnerian baritones have been Canada's George London, Germany's Hermann Uhde
and, more recently, America's James Morris.
Among the late 20th century baritones noted throughout the opera world for their Verdi performances was Vladimir Chernov
, who emerged from the former USSR
to sing at the Met. Chernov followed in the footsteps of such richly endowed East European baritones as Ippolit Pryanishnikov (a favorite of Tchaikovski's), Joachim Tartakov (an Everardi pupil), Oskar Kamionsky (an exceptional bel canto singer nicknamed the "Russian Battistini"), Waclaw Brzezinski (known as the "Polish Battistini"), Georges Baklanoff
(a powerful singing-actor), and, during a career lasting from 1935 to 1966, the Bolshoi
's Pavel Lisitsian
. Dmitri Hvorostovsky
and Sergei Leiferkus
are two Russian baritones of the modern era who appear regularly in the West. Like Lisitsian, they sing Verdi and the works of their native composers, including Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades
.
In the realm of French song, the bass-baritone
José van Dam
and the lighter-voiced Gérard Souzay
have been notable. Souzay's repertoire extended from the Baroque works of Jean-Baptiste Lully
to 20th century composers such as Francis Poulenc
. Pierre Bernac
, Souzay's teacher, was an interpreter of Poulenc's songs in the previous generation. Older baritones identified with this style include France's Dinh Gilly
and Charles Panzéra
and Australia's John Brownlee
. Another Australian, Peter Dawson, made a small but precious legacy of benchmark Handel recordings during the 1920s and 1930s. (Dawson, incidentally, acquired his outstanding Handelian technique from Sir Charles Santley.) Yet another Australian baritone of distinction between the wars was Harold Williams
, who was based in the United Kingdom. Important British-born baritones of the 1930s and 1940s were Dennis Noble
, who sang Italian and English operatic roles, and the Mozartian Roy Henderson. Both appeared often at Covent Garden.
Prior to World War II, Germany's Heinrich Schlusnus, Gerhard Hüsch and Herbert Janssen were celebrated for their beautifully sung lieder recitals as well as for their mellifluous operatic performances in Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner respectively. After the war's conclusion, Hermann Prey
and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
appeared on the scene to take their place. In addition to his interpretations of lieder and the works of Mozart, Prey sang in Strauss operas and tackled lighter Wagner roles such as Wolfram. Fischer-Dieskau sang parts in 'fringe' operas by the likes of Ferruccio Busoni
and Paul Hindemith
as well as appearing in standard works by Verdi and Wagner. He earned his principal renown, however, as a lieder singer. Talented German and Austrian lieder singers of a younger generation include Olaf Bär
, Matthias Goerne
, Wolfgang Holzmair
(who also performs regularly in opera), Thomas Quasthoff
, Stephan Genz and Christian Gerhaher
. Well-known non-Germanic baritones of recent times have included the Italians Giorgio Zancanaro
and Leo Nucci
, the Frenchman François le Roux
, the Canadian Gerald Finley
and James Westman
and the versatile American Thomas Hampson, his compatriot Nathan Gunn
and the Britisher Simon Keenlyside
.
Some bass-baritones are baritones, like Friedrich Schorr, George London, James Morris and Bryn Terfel. The following are more often done by lower baritones as opposed to high basses.
, the baritone part sings in a similar range to the Lead (singing the melody) however usually singing lower than the lead. A barbershop baritone has a specific and specialized role in the formation of the four-part harmony that characterizes the style. Because barbershop singers can also be female, there is consequently such a singer (at least in barbershop singing) as a female baritone.
The baritone singer is often the one required to support or "fill" the bass sound (typically by singing the fifth
above the bass root) and to complete a chord. On the other hand, the baritone will occasionally find himself harmonizing above the melody, which calls for a tenor-like quality. Because the baritone fills the chord, the part is often not very melodic.
In bluegrass music
, the melody line is called the lead. Tenor is sung an interval of a third above the lead. Baritone is the fifth of the scale that has the lead as a tonic, and may be sung below the lead, or even above the lead (and the tenor), in which case it is called "high baritone". Conversely, the more "soul
" baritones have the more traditional timbre, but sing in a vocal range that is closer to the tenor vocal range. Some of these singers include Tom Jones
Michael McDonald
, and Levi Stubbs
of the Four Tops
.
Voice type
A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...
that lies between the bass
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
and tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep (or heavy) sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C
C (musical note)
C or Do is the first note of the fixed-Do solfège scale. Its enharmonic is B.-Middle C:Middle C is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard...
to the F above middle C (i.e. F2
Scientific pitch notation
Scientific pitch notation is one of several methods that name the notes of the standard Western chromatic scale by combining a letter-name, accidentals, and a number identifying the pitch's octave...
–F4) in choral music, and from the second G below middle C to the G above middle C (G2 to G4) in operatic music, but can be extended at either end.
History
The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as baritonans late in the 15th century, usually in French sacredReligious music
Religious music is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence.A lot of music has been composed to complement religion, and many composers have derived inspiration from their own religion. Many forms of traditional music have been adapted to fit religions'...
polyphonic
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice.
Baritones took roughly the range we know today at the beginning of the 18th century but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into the 19th century. Indeed, many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles (or bass-baritone
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
parts in modern parlance). Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
. The greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
, Papageno in The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
and the Don in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
.
19th century
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
style of vocalism which arose in Italy in the early 19th century supplanted the castrato
Castrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
-dominated opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...
of the previous century. It led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. Traditionally, basses in operas had been cast as authority figures such as a king or high priest; but with the advent of the more fluid baritone voice, the roles allotted by composers to lower male voices expanded in the direction of trusted companions or even romantic leads—normally the province of tenors. More often than not, however, baritones found themselves portraying villains.
The principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be:
- Gioachino Rossini (The Barber of SevilleThe Barber of SevilleThe Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
, William TellWilliam Tell (opera)Guillaume Tell is an opera in four acts by Gioachino Rossini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. Based on the legend of William Tell, this opera was Rossini's last, even though the composer lived for nearly forty more years...
); - Gaetano DonizettiGaetano DonizettiDomenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
(Don PasqualeDon PasqualeDon Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
, L'elisir d'amoreL'elisir d'amoreL'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
, Lucia di LammermoorLucia di LammermoorLucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, Lucrezia BorgiaLucrezia Borgia (opera)Lucrezia Borgia is a melodramma, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after the play by Victor Hugo, in its turn after the legend of Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia was first performed on 26 December 1833 at La Scala, Milan with...
, La favoriteLa favoriteLa favorite is an opera in four acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, based on the play Le comte de Comminges by Baculard d'Arnaud...
); - Vincenzo BelliniVincenzo BelliniVincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
(I puritaniI puritaniI puritani is an opera in three acts by Vincenzo Bellini. It was his last opera. Its libretto is by Count Carlo Pepoli, based on Têtes rondes et Cavaliers by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine, which is in turn based on Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality. It was first produced at...
, NormaNorma (opera)Norma is a tragedia lirica or opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with libretto by Felice Romani after Norma, ossia L'infanticidio by Alexandre Soumet. First produced at La Scala on December 26, 1831, it is generally regarded as an example of the supreme height of the bel canto tradition...
); - Giacomo MeyerbeerGiacomo MeyerbeerGiacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
(Les HuguenotsLes HuguenotsLes Huguenots is a French opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most popular and spectacular examples of the style of grand opera. The opera is in five acts and premiered in Paris in 1836. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps....
); and - the young Giuseppe VerdiGiuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
(NabuccoNabuccoNabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
, ErnaniErnaniErnani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
, MacbethMacbeth (opera)Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...
, RigolettoRigolettoRigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
, La traviataLa traviataLa traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
, Il trovatoreIl trovatoreIl trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
).
The prolific operas of these composers, plus the works of Verdi's maturity, such as Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
, La forza del destino
La forza del destino
La forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
, Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
/Don Carlo, the revised Simon Boccanegra
Simon Boccanegra
Simon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....
, Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
, Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
and Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
, blazed many new and rewarding performance pathways for baritones.
Figaro in Il barbiere is often called the first true baritone role. However, Donizetti and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasise the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. Further pathways opened up when the musically complex and physically demanding operas of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
began to enter the mainstream repertory of the world's opera houses during the second half of the 19th century.
The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini
Antonio Tamburini
Antonio Tamburini was an Italian operatic baritone.Born in Faenza, then part of the Papal States, Tamburini studied the orchestral horn with his father and voice with Aldobrando Rossi, before making his debut as a singer, aged 18, in La contessa di colle erbose . He went on to become one of the...
(1800–1876). He was a famous Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
in Mozart's eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty, flexibility and smooth tonal emission, which are the hallmarks of a bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
singer. Tamburini's range, however, was probably closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern "Verdi baritone". His French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie
Henri-Bernard Dabadie
Henri-Bernard Dabadie was a French baritone, particularly associated with Rossini and Auber roles.- Life and career :...
, who was a mainstay of the Paris Opera
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell. Dabadie sang in Italy, too, where he was the first Belcore in 1832.
The most important of Tamburini's Italianate successors were all Verdians. They included Giorgio Ronconi
Giorgio Ronconi
Giorgio Ronconi was an Italian operatic baritone celebrated for his brilliant acting and compelling stage presence. In 1842, he created the title-role in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco at La Scala, Milan.-Career:...
, who created the title role in Verdi's Nabucco; Felice Varesi
Felice Varesi
Felice Varesi was a French-born Italian baritone with an illustrious singing career that began in the 1830s and extended into the 1860s...
, who created the title roles in Verdi's Macbeth
Macbeth (opera)
Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...
and Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
and was the first Germont in La traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
; Antonio Superchi
Antonio Superchi
Antonio Superchi was an Italian operatic baritone who had an active international career from 1838-1858. He appeared at most of the major opera houses in Italy and Spain, and at Her Majesty's Theatre in London....
, who created Don Carlo is Verdi's Ernani
Ernani
Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
; Francesco Graziani
Francesco Graziani (baritone)
Francesco Graziani was an Italian baritone and voice teacher. Graziani has been called the first modern baritone because his vocal attributes were well suited to the high-lying operatic parts composed by Giuseppe Verdi, with whom he worked.-Early life and career:Graziani was born in 1828 in Fermo,...
, who created Don Carlo in Verdi's La forza del destino; Leone Giraldoni
Leone Giraldoni
Leone Giraldoni was a celebrated Italian operatic baritone. He created the title roles of Gaetano Donizetti's Il duca d'Alba and Verdi's Simon Boccanegra as well as the role of Renato in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera .Giraldoni studied in Florence with Luigi Ronzi and made his début as the High...
, who created Renato in Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and was the first Simon Boccanegra; Enrico Delle Sedie
Enrico Delle Sedie
Enrico Augusto Delle Sedie was an Italian operatic baritone who sang extensively in Europe, performing the bel canto repertoire and in works by Verdi....
, who was London's first Renato; Adriano Pantaleoni, who was renowned for his performances as Amonasro in Aida and in other Verdi works at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, Milan; Francesco Pandolfini, whose singing at La Scala during the 1870s was praised by Verdi; Antonio Cotogni
Antonio Cotogni
Antonio Cotogni was an Italian baritone of the first magnitude. Regarded internationally as being one of the greatest male opera singers of the 19th century, he was particularly admired by the composer Giuseppe Verdi...
, a much lauded singer in Milan, London and Saint Petersburg, the first Italian Posa in Verdi's Don Carlo and later a great vocal pedagogue, too; and, Giuseppe Del Puente, who sang Verdi to acclaim in the United States.
Among the non-Italian born baritones that were active in the third-quarter of the 19th century, Tamburini's mantle as an outstanding exponent of Mozart and Donizetti's music was probably taken up most faithfully by a Belgian, Camille Everardi
Camille Everardi
Camille Everardi was a Belgian operatic baritone who had an active international career during the 1850s through the 1870s. He particularly excelled in the works of Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini. Several music critics of his day likened his voice to that of Antonio Tamburini...
, who later settled in Russia and taught voice. In France, Paul Barroilhet
Paul Barroilhet
Paul-Bernard Barroilhet was a French operatic baritone.-Career:Barroilhet studied at the Conservatoire de Paris and then with Davide Banderali in Milan...
succeeded Dabadie as the Paris opera's best known baritone. Like Dabadie, he also sang in Italy and created an important Donizetti role: in his case, Alphonse in La Favorite
La favorite
La favorite is an opera in four acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, based on the play Le comte de Comminges by Baculard d'Arnaud...
(in 1840).
Luckily, the gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
was invented early enough to capture on disc the voices of the top Italian Verdi and Donizetti baritones of the last two decades of the 19th century, whose operatic performances were characterized by considerable re-creative freedom and a high degree of technical finish. They included Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini
Mattia Battistini was an Italian operatic baritone. He became internationally famous due to the beauty of his voice and the virtuosity of his singing technique, and he earned the sobriquet "King of Baritones".-Early life:...
(known as the "King of Baritones"), Giuseppe Kaschmann (born Josip Kašman
Josip Kašman
Josip Kašman or Giuseppe Kaschmann, , was a famous operatic baritone...
and who, atypically for his kind, sang Wagner's Telramund and Amfortas not in Italian but in German, at the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
, in the 1890s); Giuseppe Campanari
Giuseppe Campanari
Giuseppe Campanari Cooke gives his date of birth as 17 November 1858 but this is unlikely given the d.o.b. of his brother Leandro. was an Italian-born operatic baritone and cellist...
; Antonio Magini-Coletti
Antonio Magini-Coletti
Antonio Magini-Coletti was a leading Italian baritone who had a prolific career in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. A versatile artist, he appeared in several opera world premieres but was particularly associated with the works of...
; Mario Ancona
Mario Ancona
Mario Ancona , was a leading Italian baritone and master of bel canto singing. He appeared at some of the most important opera houses in Europe and America during what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Opera".-Career:Ancona was born into a middle-class Jewish family at Livorno, Tuscany,...
(chosen to be the first Silvio in Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
); Giuseppe Pacini; and, Antonio Scotti
Antonio Scotti
Antonio Scotti was an Italian baritone. He was a principal artist of the New York Metropolitan Opera for more than 33 seasons, but also sang with great success at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and Milan's La Scala.-Life:Antonio Scotti was born in Naples, Italy...
, (who came to the Met from Europe in 1899 and remained on the roster of singers until 1933!). Meanwhile, Antonio Pini-Corsi
Antonio Pini-Corsi
Antonio Pini-Corsi was an Italian operatic baritone of international renown. He possessed a ripe-toned voice of great flexibility and displayed tremendous skill at patter singing...
was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between circa 1880 and World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He revelled in comic opera parts by Rossini, Donizetti and Paer
Ferdinando Paer
-Biography:Paer was born at Parma. His father was a trumpeter with the Ducal Bodyguards and also performed at church and court events. His name, Ferdinando, was after Duke Ferdinand of Parma and was given to him by Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, Duke Ferdinand's wife...
, among others. In 1893, he created the part of Ford in Verdi's last opera, Falstaff.
Notable among their contemporaries were the cultured and technically adroit French baritones Jean Lassalle (hailed as the most accomplished baritone of his generation), Victor Maurel
Victor Maurel
Victor Maurel was a French operatic baritone who enjoyed an international reputation as a great singing-actor.-Biography:...
(the creator of Verdi's Iago, Falstaff and Tonio in Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...
's Pagliacci), Paul Lhérie
Paul Lhérie
Paul Lhérie , was a French tenor, then baritone, later a vocal teacher, most famous for creating the role of Don José in Bizet's Carmen.-Life and career:...
(the first Posa in the revised, Italian-language version of Don Carlos
Don Carlos
Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
), and Maurice Renaud
Maurice Renaud
Maurice Renaud , was a cultured French operatic baritone. He enjoyed an international reputation for the superlative quality of his singing and the brilliance of his acting.-Early years:...
(a singing-actor of the first magnitude). Lassalle, Maurel and Renaud enjoyed superlative careers on either side of the Atlantic and left a valuable legacy of recordings. Five other significant Francophone baritones who recorded, too, during the early days of the gramophone/phonograph were Léon Melchissédec
Léon Melchissédec
Léon Melchissédec was a French baritone who enjoyed a long career in the French capital across a broad range of operatic genres, and later made some recordings and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire.-Life and Career:He played second violin in the Théâtre de Saint-Étienne before coming to Paris...
and Jean Note
Jean Noté
Jean-Baptiste Noté was a Belgian operatic baritone. He graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Ghent in 1884 with first prizes in singing and lyrical declamation. He made his professional opera debut in 1885 at the Opéra de Lille as Lord Enrico Ashton in Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor...
of the Paris Opera and Gabriel Soulacroix
Gabriel Soulacroix
Gabriel-Valentin Soulacroix was a French operatic baritone...
, Henry Albers and Charles Gilibert of the Opéra-Comique. The Quaker baritone David Bispham
David Bispham
David Scull Bispham was the first American–born operatic baritone to win an international reputation.- Early life and family:...
, who sang in London and New York between 1891 and 1903, was the leading American male singer of this generation. He also recorded for the gramophone.
The oldest-born star baritone known for sure to have made solo gramophone discs was the Englishman Sir Charles Santley
Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley was an English-born opera and oratorio star with a bravuraFrom the Italian verb bravare, to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era...
(1834–1922). Santley made his operatic debut in Italy in 1858 and became one of Covent Garden's leading singers. He was still giving critically acclaimed concerts in London in the 1890s. The composer of Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
, Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, wrote Valentine's aria "Even bravest heart" for him in 1864. A couple of primitive cylinder recordings dating from about 1900 have been attributed by collectors to the dominant French baritone of the 1860s and 1870s, Jean-Baptiste Faure
Jean-Baptiste Faure
Jean-Baptiste Faure was a celebrated French operatic baritone and an art collector of great significance. He also composed a number of classical songs.-Singing career:Faure was born in Moulins...
(1830–1914), the creator of Posa in Verdi's original French-language version of Don Carlos. It is doubtful, however, that Faure (who retired in 1886) made the cylinders. However, a contemporary of Faure's, Antonio Cotogni, (1831–1918)—probably the foremost Italian baritone of his generation—can be heard, briefly and dimly, at the age of 77, on a duet recording with the tenor Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi was an operatic tenor from Rome who enjoyed an important international career. In 1924, a reputable biographical dictionary of musicians called him 'one of the most renowned and esteemed singers of the last 50 years'...
. (Cotogni and Marconi had sung together in the first London performance of Amilcare Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian composer, largely of operas.-Biography:Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.Two years...
's La Gioconda
La Gioconda (opera)
La Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli set to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835...
in 1883, performing the roles of Barnaba and Enzo respectively.)
There are 19th century references in the musical literature to certain baritone sub-types. These include the light and tenorish baryton-Martin, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin
Jean-Blaise Martin
Jean-Blaise Martin, full name Nicolas Jean-Blaise Martin was a French operasinger whose tessitura lay between tenor and baritone, which became later known as "baryton-martin"....
(1768/69–1837), and the deeper, more powerful Heldenbariton (today's bass-baritone) of Wagnerian opera.
Perhaps the most accomplished Heldenbaritons of Wagner's day were August Kindermann
August Kindermann
August Kindermann was a German bass-baritone singer and regisseur, particularly noted for his performances in the operas of Richard Wagner. He began his career singing in the chorus of the Berlin State Opera in 1836 and made his solo debut there in 1837 in a small role in Spontini's Agnes von...
, Franz Betz
Franz Betz
Franz Betz was a German bass-baritone opera singer who sang at the Berlin State Opera from 1859 to 1897. He was particularly known for his performances in operas by Richard Wagner and created the role of Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.-Biography:Franz Betz was born in Mainz and...
and Theodor Reichmann. Betz created Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs
Hans Sachs was a German meistersinger , poet, playwright and shoemaker.-Biography:Hans Sachs was born in Nuremberg . His father was a tailor. He attended Latin school in Nuremberg...
in Die Meistersinger
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
and undertook Wotan in the first Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
cycle at Bayreuth, while Reichmann created Amfortas in Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
, also at Bayreuth. Lyric German baritones sang lighter Wagnerian roles such as Wolfram in Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
, Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
or Telramund in Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
. They made large strides, too, in the performance of art song and oratorio, with Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
favouring several baritones for his vocal music, in particular Johann Michael Vogl
Johann Michael Vogl
Johann Michael Vogl , was an Austrian baritone singer and composer. Though famous in his day, he is remembered mainly for his close professional relationship and friendship with composer Franz Schubert....
.
Nineteenth-century operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s became the preserve of lightweight baritone voices. They were given comic parts in the tradition of the previous century's comic bass by Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
in many of their productions. This did not prevent the French master of operetta, Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, from assigning the villain's role in The Tales of Hoffmann to a big-voiced baritone for the sake of dramatic effect. Other 19th-century French composers like Meyerbeer, Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
, Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
and Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
wrote attractive parts for baritones, too. These included Nelusko in L'Africaine
L'Africaine
L'africaine is a grand opera, the last work of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French libretto was written by Eugène Scribe. The opera is about fictitious events in the life of the real historical person Vasco da Gama...
(Meyerbeer's last opera), Mephistopheles in La damnation de Faust (a role also sung by basses), the Priest of Dagon in Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah (opera)
Samson and Delilah , Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire...
, Escamillo in Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, Zurga in Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was first performed on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run...
, Lescaut in Manon
Manon
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
, Athanael in Thaïs
Thaïs (opera)
Thaïs is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role...
and Herod in Hérodiade
Hérodiade
Hérodiade is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Paul Milliet and Henri Grémont, based on the novella Hérodias by Gustave Flaubert...
. Russian composers included substantial baritone parts in their operas. Witness the title roles in Peter Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
's Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (opera)
Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
(which received its first production in 1879) and Alexander Borodin
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was a member of the group of composers called The Five , who were dedicated to producing a specifically Russian kind of art music...
's Prince Igor
Prince Igor
Prince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
(1890).
Mozart continued to be sung throughout the 19th century although, generally speaking, his operas were not revered to the same extent that they are today by music critics and audiences. Back then, baritones rather than high basses normally sang Don Giovanni - arguably Mozart's greatest male operatic creation. Famous Dons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries included Scotti and Maurel (see the photograph accompanying this article), as well as Portugal's Francisco d'Andrade and Sweden's John Forsell
John Forsell
John Forsell, born Carl Johan Jacob Forsell, , was a prominent Swedish baritone, opera administrator and teacher of voice. He was the leading baritone of the Royal Swedish Opera from 1896–1918, and thereafter sang roles periodically with the company until his last stage performance in 1938. From...
.
20th century
The dawn of the 20th century opened up more opportunities for baritones than ever before as a taste for strenuously exciting vocalism and lurid, "slice-of-life" operatic plots took hold in Italy and spread elsewhere. The most prominent verismoVerismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
baritones included such major singers in Europe and America as the polished Giuseppe De Luca
Giuseppe de Luca
Giuseppe De Luca , was a famous Italian baritone who achieved his greatest triumphs at the New York Metropolitan Opera...
(the first Sharpless in Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
), Mario Sammarco
Mario Sammarco
Mario Sammarco was an Italian operatic baritone noted for his histrionic ability.-Biography:...
(the first Gerard in Andrea Chénier
Andrea Chénier
Andrea Chénier is a verismo opera in four acts by the composer Umberto Giordano, set to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It is based loosely on the life of the French poet, André Chénier , who was executed during the French Revolution....
), Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni
Eugenio Giraldoni was an Italian operatic baritone who enjoyed a substantial international career. In 1900, he created the role of Baron Scarpia....
(the first Scarpia in Tosca
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
), Pasquale Amato
Pasquale Amato
Pasquale Amato was an outstanding Italian operatic baritone. Amato enjoyed an international reputation but attained the peak of his fame in New York City, where he sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 until 1921....
(the first Rance in La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West
La fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
), Riccardo Stracciari
Riccardo Stracciari
Riccardo Stracciari was a leading Italian baritone. His repertoire consisted mainly of Italian operatic works, with Rossini's Figaro and Verdi's Rigoletto becoming his signature roles during a long and distinguished career which stretched from 1899 to 1944.- Life and career :Born near Bologna,...
(noted for his richly attractive timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
) and Domenico Viglione-Borghesi, whose voice was exceeded in size only by that of the lion-voiced Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo
Titta Ruffo , born as Ruffo Titta Cafiero, was an Italian opera star who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" , he was greatly admired, even by rival baritones, such as Giuseppe De Luca, who said of Ruffo: "His was not a voice, it was a miracle" Titta Ruffo (9...
. Ruffo was the most commanding Italian baritone of his era or, arguably, any other era. He was at his prime from the early 1900s to the early 1920s and enjoyed success in Italy, England and America (in Chicago and later at the Met).
Between them, these baritones established the echt performance style for baritones undertaking roles in verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
operas. The chief verismo composers were Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero Leoncavallo was an Italian opera composer. His two-act work Pagliacci remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, appearing as number 20 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.-Biography:...
, Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
, Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti was an Italian opera composer.-Biography:Alberto Franchetti was born in Turin, a Jewish nobleman of independent means. He studied first in Venice, then in Dresden under Felix Draeseke, and finally at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger. His first major success...
, Umberto Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
and Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea
Francesco Cilea was an Italian composer. Today he is particularly known for his operas L'arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur.-Biography:...
. Verdi's works continued to remain popular, however, with audiences in Italy, the Spanish-speaking countries, the United States and the United Kingdom and, interestingly enough, Germany, where there was a major Verdi revival in Berlin between the Wars.
Outside the field of Italian opera, an important addition to the Austro-German repertory occurred in 1905. This was the premiere of Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
's Salome
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
, with the pivotal part of John the Baptist assigned to a baritone. (The enormous-voiced Dutch baritone Anton van Rooy
Anton van Rooy
Anton van Rooy was a Dutch bass-baritone. He had a voice of enormous proportions and is most remembered for his association with the music dramas of Richard Wagner, especially the Ring Cycle, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and Parsifal.Born in Rotterdam, van Rooy studied with the famous voice...
, a Wagner specialist, sang John when the opera reached the Met in 1907). Then, in 1925, Germany's Leo Schützendorf created the title baritone role in Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's harrowing Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
. In a separate development, the French composer Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
's post-Wagnerian masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
featured not one but two lead baritones at its 1902 premiere. These two baritones, Jean Périer
Jean Périer
Jean Périer was a French operatic baritone and actor. Although he sang principally within the operetta repertoire, Périer did portray a number of opera roles; mostly within operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giacomo Puccini...
and Hector Dufranne
Hector Dufranne
Hector Dufranne was a Belgian operatic bass-baritone who enjoyed a long career that took him to opera houses throughout Europe and the United States for more than four decades...
, possessed contrasting voices. (Dufranne — sometimes classed as a bass-baritone — had a darker, more powerful instrument than did Périer, who was a true baryton-Martin.)
Characteristic of the Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
ian baritones of the 20th century was a general progression of individual singers from higher-lying baritone parts to lower-pitched ones. This was the case with Germany's Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter
Hans Hotter was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose...
. Hotter made his debut in 1929. As a young singer he appeared in Verdi and created the Commandant in Richard Strauss's Friedenstag
Friedenstag
Friedenstag is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss, his Opus 81, to a German libretto by Joseph Gregor. Strauss had hoped to work again with Stefan Zweig on a new project after their previous collaboration of Die schweigsame Frau, but the Nazi authorities had harassed Strauss over his...
and Olivier in Capriccio
Capriccio (opera)
Capriccio is the final opera by German composer Richard Strauss, subtitled "A Conversation Piece for Music". The opera received its premiere performance at the Nationaltheater München on October 28, 1942. Clemens Krauss and Strauss himself wrote the German libretto...
. By the 1950s, however, he was being hailed as the top Wagnerian bass-baritone in the world. His Wotan was especially praised by critics for its musicianship. Other major Wagnerian baritones have included Hotter's predecessors Leopold Demuth, Anton van Rooy
Anton van Rooy
Anton van Rooy was a Dutch bass-baritone. He had a voice of enormous proportions and is most remembered for his association with the music dramas of Richard Wagner, especially the Ring Cycle, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and Parsifal.Born in Rotterdam, van Rooy studied with the famous voice...
, Hermann Weil, Clarence Whitehill
Clarence Whitehill
Clarence Whitehill was a leading American bass-baritone. He sang on both sides of the Atlantic and is best remembered for his association with the music dramas of Richard Wagner....
, Friedrich Schorr
Friedrich Schorr
Friedrich Schorr , was a renowned Austrian-Hungarian bass-baritone opera singer of Jewish origin. He later became a naturalized American....
, Rudolf Bockelmann
Rudolf Bockelmann
Rudolf Bockelmann was a German dramatic baritone and Kammersänger. He built an international career as an outstanding Wagnerian singer but damaged his reputation during the 1930s by joining the Nazi Party.-Biography:Bockelmann, the son of a village schoolmaster, was born at Bodenteich near Celle...
and Hans Hermann Nissen. Demuth, van Rooy, Weil and Whitehill were at their peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries while Schorr, Bockelmann and Nissen were stars of the 1920s and 1930s.
In addition to their heavyweight Wagnerian cousins, there was a plethora of baritones with more lyrical voices active in Germany and Austria during the period between the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 and the end of WW2 in 1945. Among them were Joseph Schwarz (a vocal virtuoso), Heinrich Schlusnus
Heinrich Schlusnus
Heinrich Schlusnus was Germany's foremost lyric baritone of the period between World War I and World War II. He sang opera and lieder with equal distinction.-Career:...
(the owner of an exceptionally beautiful voice), Herbert Janssen
Herbert Janssen
Herbert Janssen was a leading German operatic baritone who had an international career in Europe and the United States.- Biography :...
, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender
Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender
Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender was a German operatic baritone, particularly associated with Mozart and Verdi roles...
, Karl Schmidt-Walter and Gerhard Hüsch
Gerhard Hüsch
Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch was one of the most important German singers of modern times. A lyric baritone, he specialized in Lieder but also sang, to a lesser extent, German and Italian opera.-Career:...
. Their abundant inter-war Italian counterparts included, among others, Carlo Galeffi
Carlo Galeffi
Carlo Galeffi was a leading Italian baritone, particularly associated with the operatic works of Giuseppe Verdi and the various verismo composers.- Life and career :...
, Giuseppe Danise, Enrico Molinari, Umberto Urbano, Cesare Formichi
Cesare Formichi
Cesare Formichi was a prominent Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory....
, Luigi Montesanto, Apollo Granforte
Apollo Granforte
Apollo Granforte was an Italian opera singer and one of the leading baritones active during the inter-war period of the 20th century.-Life and career:...
, Benvenuto Franci, Renato Zanelli
Renato Zanelli
Renato Zanelli was a Chilean operatic baritone and later tenor, particularly associated with heroic Italian and German roles, notably Verdi's Otello.-Life and career:...
(who switched to tenor roles in 1924), Mario Basiola, Giovanni Inghilleri, Carlo Morelli (the Chilean-born younger brother of Renato Zanelli) and Carlo Tagliabue
Carlo Tagliabue
Carlo Tagliabue was an Italian baritone.After studies with Leopoldo Gennai and Annibale Guidotti he made his debut in Lodi, Lombardy, in Loreley and Aida. His debuts in Genoa , Torino, La Scala , Rome , and Naples were all in Tristan und Isolde...
. (The last named baritone retired as late as 1958.)
One of the best known Italian Verdi baritones of the 1920s and '30s, Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile
Mariano Stabile was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Falstaff.- Career :...
, sang Iago and Rigoletto and Falstaff (at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
) under the baton of Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
. Stabile also appeared in London, Chicago and Salzburg. He was noted more for his histrionic skills than for his voice, however. Stabile was followed by Tito Gobbi
Tito Gobbi
Tito Gobbi was an Italian operatic baritone with an international reputation.-Biography:Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa and studied law at the University of Padua before he trained as a singer. Giulio Crimi, a well-known Italian tenor of a previous generation, was Gobbi's teacher in Rome...
, a versatile singing-actor capable of vivid comic and tragic performances during the years of his prime in the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. He learned more than 100 roles in his lifetime and was mostly known for his roles in Verdi and Puccini operas, including appearances as Scarpia opposite soprano Maria Callas
Maria Callas
Maria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts...
as Tosca at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
.
Gobbi's competitors included Gino Bechi
Gino Bechi
Gino Bechi was an Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially in Verdi roles.-Life and career:...
, Giuseppe Valdengo
Giuseppe Valdengo
Giuseppe Valdengo was an Italian operatic baritone. Opera News said that, "Although his timbre lacked the innate beauty of some of his baritone contemporaries, Valdengo's performances were invariably satisfying — bold and assured in attack but scrupulously musical."-Biography:Valdengo first...
, Paolo Silveri
Paolo Silveri
Paolo Silveri was an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, one of the finest Verdi baritones of his time....
, Giuseppe Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei was an Italian baritone, who performed mostly the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi....
, Ettore Bastianini
Ettore Bastianini
Ettore Bastianini was an Italian opera singer who was particularly associated with the operas of Verdi. He had a prolific international career between 1945 and 1965 which was cut short by throat cancer. He began his professional career as a bass working in opera houses throughout Italy and in...
and Giangiacomo Guelfi
Giangiacomo Guelfi
Giangiacomo Guelfi is an operatic baritone, particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini. Born in Rome, he studied law before turning to vocal studies, in Florence, with the great baritone Titta Ruffo. Giangiacomo made his stage debut in Spoleto, as Rigoletto in 1950...
. Another of Gobbi's contemporaries was the Welshman Geraint Evans
Geraint Evans
Sir Geraint Llewellyn Evans was a Welsh baritone or bass-baritone noted for operatic roles including Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, and the title roles in Falstaff and Wozzeck...
, who famously sang Falstaff at Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an English opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.-History:...
and created the roles of Mr. Flint
Billy Budd (opera)
Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville....
and Mountjoy
Gloriana
Gloriana is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten to an English libretto by William Plomer, based on Elizabeth and Essex by Lytton Strachey...
in works by Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
. Some considered his best role to have been Wozzeck. The next significant Welsh baritone was Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel
Bryn Terfel Jones CBE is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner....
. He made his premiere at Glyndebourne in 1990 and went on to build an international career as Falstaff and, more generally, in the operas of Mozart and Wagner.
An outstanding group of virile-voiced American baritones appeared in the 1920s. The younger members of this group were still active as recently as the late 1970s. Outstanding among its members were the Met
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
-based Verdians Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Mervil Tibbett was a great American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera company more than 600 times from 1923 to 1950...
(a compelling, rich-voiced singing-actor), Richard Bonelli
Richard Bonelli
right|thumb|Bonelli, ca. 1940sRichard Bonelli was an American operatic baritone active from 1915 to the late 1970s.-Life and career:...
, John Charles Thomas
John Charles Thomas
John Charles Thomas was a popular American opera, operetta and concert baritone.-Birth, schooling and stage debut:...
, Robert Weede
Robert Weede
-Biography:Born Robert Wiedefeld in Baltimore, Maryland, Weede studied voice at the Eastman School of Music and in Milan. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1937, as Tonio in Pagliacci...
, Leonard Warren
Leonard Warren
Leonard Warren was a famous American opera singer. A baritone, he was a leading artist for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.-Biography:...
and Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill
Robert Merrill was an American operatic baritone.-Early life:Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, to tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife Lillian, née Balaban, immigrants from Warsaw, Poland.His mother...
. They sang French opera, too, as did the American-born but Paris-based baritone of the 1920s and '30s, Arthur Endreze.
Also to be found singing Verdi roles at the Met, Covent Garden and the Vienna Opera during the late 1930s and the 1940s was the big-voiced Hungarian baritone, Sandor (Alexander) Sved.
The leading Verdi baritones of the 1970s and '80s were probably Italy's Renato Bruson
Renato Bruson
Renato Bruson is an Italian operatic baritone. Bruson is widely considered one of the most important Verdi baritones of the late 20th and early 21st century. He was born in Granze near Padua, Italy.-Biography and career:...
and Piero Cappuccilli
Piero Cappuccilli
Piero Cappuccilli was an Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with Verdi roles, especiallyMacbeth and Simon Boccanegra; he was renowned for his extraordinary breath control and smooth legato, and is widely regarded as one of the finest Italian baritones of the second half of the 20th...
, America's Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes
Sherrill Milnes is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera....
, Sweden's Ingvar Wixell
Ingvar Wixell
Ingvar Wixell was a Swedish baritone who had an active international career in operas and concerts from 1955-2003. He mostly sang roles from the Italian repertory, and, according to The New York Times, "was best known for his steady-toned, riveting portrayals of the major baritone roles of...
and the Romanian baritone Nicolae Herlea
Nicolae Herlea
Nicolae Herlea is a Romanian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Rossini's Figaro, which he sang around 550 times during his career....
. At the same time, Britain's Sir Thomas Allen was considered to be the most versatile baritone of his generation in regards to repertoire, which ranged from Mozart to Verdi, through French and Russian opera, to modern English music. Another British baritone, Norman Bailey, established himself internationally as a memorable Wotan and Hans Sachs. He had, however, a distinguished if lighter-voiced Wagnerian rival during the 1960s and 1970s in the person of Thomas Stewart of America. Other notable post-War Wagnerian baritones have been Canada's George London, Germany's Hermann Uhde
Hermann Uhde
Hermann Uhde was a German Wagnerian baritone. He was born in Bremen and died on stage of a heart attack during a performance in Copenhagen....
and, more recently, America's James Morris.
Among the late 20th century baritones noted throughout the opera world for their Verdi performances was Vladimir Chernov
Vladimir Chernov
Vladimir Chernov is a Russian baritone, particularly associated with the Russian and Italian opera repertories.-Early life:...
, who emerged from the former USSR
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to sing at the Met. Chernov followed in the footsteps of such richly endowed East European baritones as Ippolit Pryanishnikov (a favorite of Tchaikovski's), Joachim Tartakov (an Everardi pupil), Oskar Kamionsky (an exceptional bel canto singer nicknamed the "Russian Battistini"), Waclaw Brzezinski (known as the "Polish Battistini"), Georges Baklanoff
Georges Baklanoff
Georges Baklanoff was a Russian operatic baritone who had an active international career from 1903 until his death in 1938. Possessing a powerful and flexible voice, he sang roles from a wide variety of musical periods and in many languages...
(a powerful singing-actor), and, during a career lasting from 1935 to 1966, the Bolshoi
Bolshoi Theatre
The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world...
's Pavel Lisitsian
Pavel Lisitsian
Pavel Gerasimovich Lisitsian was a Soviet baritone opera singer who performed in the Bolshoi Opera, Moscow from 1940 until his retirement from stage in 1966....
. Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky , is a leading baritone opera singer from Russia.Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. He studied at the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts under Yekatherina Yofel and made his debut at Krasnoyarsk Opera House, in the role of Marullo in Rigoletto...
and Sergei Leiferkus
Sergei Leiferkus
Sergei Leiferkus is an operatic baritone from Russia, known for his dramatic technique and powerful voice particularly in Russian and Italian language repertoire. He is most notable for his roles as Scarpia in Tosca, Iago in Otello, Grand-prétre de Dagon in Samson et Dalila and Simon Boccanegra...
are two Russian baritones of the modern era who appear regularly in the West. Like Lisitsian, they sing Verdi and the works of their native composers, including Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades (opera)
The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...
.
In the realm of French song, the bass-baritone
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the Dutchman in Der fliegende...
José van Dam
José van Dam
Joseph, Baron van Damme , known as José van Dam, is a Belgian bass-baritone.At the age of 17, he entered the Brussels Royal Conservatory and studied with Frederic Anspach. A year later, he graduated with diplomas and first prizes in voice and opera performance...
and the lighter-voiced Gérard Souzay
Gérard Souzay
Gérard Souzay was a French baritone singer, regarded as one of the very finest interpreters of mélodie in the generation after Charles Panzéra and Pierre Bernac.-Background and education:...
have been notable. Souzay's repertoire extended from the Baroque works of Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
to 20th century composers such as Francis Poulenc
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
. Pierre Bernac
Pierre Bernac
Pierre Bernac was a French baritone.Born Pierre Bertin in Paris on January 12, 1899, he studied with Reinhold von Wahrlich in Salzburg. he came to music relatively late and gave his first recital in 1921....
, Souzay's teacher, was an interpreter of Poulenc's songs in the previous generation. Older baritones identified with this style include France's Dinh Gilly
Dinh Gilly
Dinh Gilly was a French-Algerian operatic baritone and teacher.-Biography:He studied in Toulouse, Rome and at the Paris Conservatoire, where he won a premier prix in 1902. That same year he made his debut at the Paris Opera as Silvio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci...
and Charles Panzéra
Charles Panzéra
Charles [Auguste Louis] Panzéra was a Swiss operatic and concert baritone.-Overview:Panzéra's studies at the Paris Conservatory under the tuition of Amédée-Louis Hettich were interrupted by his volunteering into the French Army during World War I...
and Australia's John Brownlee
John Brownlee (baritone)
John Donald Mackenzie Brownlee was an Australian operatic baritone.-Biography:John Brownlee was born in Geelong, Victoria. As a boy, he became a junior naval cadet in the Royal Australian Navy, serving during World War I. Following service, he studied accounting...
. Another Australian, Peter Dawson, made a small but precious legacy of benchmark Handel recordings during the 1920s and 1930s. (Dawson, incidentally, acquired his outstanding Handelian technique from Sir Charles Santley.) Yet another Australian baritone of distinction between the wars was Harold Williams
Harold Williams (baritone)
Harold John Williams MBE was a leading Australian baritone and music teacher. Born in Sydney, he enjoyed a long and successful career in England and his native country, performing in opera, oratorio and concerts and giving radio broadcasts.-Early years:Williams was born on 3 September 1893 at...
, who was based in the United Kingdom. Important British-born baritones of the 1930s and 1940s were Dennis Noble
Dennis Noble
Dennis Noble was a noted British baritone and teacher. He appeared in opera, oratorio, musical comedy and song, from the First World War through to the late 1950s. He was renowned for his enunciation and diction, and for the metallic timbre of his voice...
, who sang Italian and English operatic roles, and the Mozartian Roy Henderson. Both appeared often at Covent Garden.
Prior to World War II, Germany's Heinrich Schlusnus, Gerhard Hüsch and Herbert Janssen were celebrated for their beautifully sung lieder recitals as well as for their mellifluous operatic performances in Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner respectively. After the war's conclusion, Hermann Prey
Hermann Prey
Hermann Prey was a German lyric baritone. He is most famous for lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.-Biography:...
and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...
appeared on the scene to take their place. In addition to his interpretations of lieder and the works of Mozart, Prey sang in Strauss operas and tackled lighter Wagner roles such as Wolfram. Fischer-Dieskau sang parts in 'fringe' operas by the likes of Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
and Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
as well as appearing in standard works by Verdi and Wagner. He earned his principal renown, however, as a lieder singer. Talented German and Austrian lieder singers of a younger generation include Olaf Bär
Olaf Bär
Olaf Bär is a German operatic baritone.- Life :Bär received his musical training in his home city of Dresden, studying at the city's Hochschule für Musik. His career has concentrated on lieder and on the lyric baritone roles of the operatic repertoire...
, Matthias Goerne
Matthias Goerne
Matthias Goerne is a German baritone.Born in Weimar, he studied with Hans-Joachim Beyer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf....
, Wolfgang Holzmair
Wolfgang Holzmair
Wolfgang Holzmair is an Austrian baritone.Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition,...
(who also performs regularly in opera), Thomas Quasthoff
Thomas Quasthoff
Thomas Quasthoff is a German bass-baritone. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has proven to have a remarkable range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations.-Biography:Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with...
, Stephan Genz and Christian Gerhaher
Christian Gerhaher
Christian Gerhaher is a German baritone and bass singer in opera, concert and notably Lied.- Biography :Christian Gerhaher studied with Paul Kuen and Raimund Grumbach at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, and Lied with Friedemann Berger, already together with his accompanist for decades...
. Well-known non-Germanic baritones of recent times have included the Italians Giorgio Zancanaro
Giorgio Zancanaro
Giorgio Zancanaro is an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially Verdi.He studied in his native Verona with Maria Palanda, and was revealed at the Verdi Competition in Busseto in 1969. He made his official operatic debut the following year in Mantua, as...
and Leo Nucci
Leo Nucci
Leo Nucci is an Italian operatic baritone, particularly suited to Verdi roles.Born at Castiglione dei Pepoli, near Bologna, he studied with Giuseppe Marchese and made his stage debut in Spoleto, as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia, in 1967, he then joined the chorus of La Scala in Milan, and...
, the Frenchman François le Roux
François le Roux
François le Roux is a French baritone. Le Roux began vocal studies at 19 with François Loup, winning prizes in Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro. He was a member of the Lyon Opera Company from 1980 to 1985, before appearing in many international houses, making his Paris Opéra debut in 1988 as Valentin...
, the Canadian Gerald Finley
Gerald Finley
-Career:He was born in Montreal and received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England...
and James Westman
James Westman
James Westman is a Canadian baritone known for his interpretation of the Verdi, Puccini and bel canto operatic repertoire, and particularly his signature role of Germont in La traviata, which he has sung in over 140 performances, with opera companies such as San Francisco Opera, Pittsburgh Opera,...
and the versatile American Thomas Hampson, his compatriot Nathan Gunn
Nathan Gunn
Nathan Gunn is an operatic baritone from the United States.He has appeared in many of world's well-known opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Dallas Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Opera,...
and the Britisher Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside
Simon Keenlyside CBE is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.-Early life and education:...
.
Bariton/Baryton-Martin
- Common Range: From the low C to the A above middle C (C3 to A4)
- Description: The Baryton-Martin lacks the lower G2-B2 range a heavier baritone is capable of, and has a lighter, almost tenor-like quality. Generally seen only in French repertoire, this fachFachThe German Fach system is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices...
was named after the French singer Jean-Blaise MartinJean-Blaise MartinJean-Blaise Martin, full name Nicolas Jean-Blaise Martin was a French operasinger whose tessitura lay between tenor and baritone, which became later known as "baryton-martin"....
. Associated with the rise of the baritone in the 19th century, Martin was well known for his fondness for falsettoFalsettoFalsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
singing, and the designation 'Baryton Martin' has been used (Faure, 1886) to separate his voice from the 'Verdi Baritone', which carried the chest register further into the upper range. It is important to note that this voice type shares the primo passaggioPassaggioPassaggio is a term used in classical singing to describe the pitch ranges in which vocal registration events occur. Beneath passaggio is the chest voice where any singer can produce a powerful sound, and above it lies the head voice, where a powerful and resonant sound is accessible, but usually...
and secondo passaggio with the Dramatic Tenor and Heldentenor (C4 and F4 respectively), and hence could be trained as a tenor.
- Roles:
- Pelléas, Pelléas et MélisandePelléas et Mélisande (opera)Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
(Claude Debussy) - L'Horloge Comtoise, L'enfant et les sortilègesL'enfant et les sortilègesL'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first being L'heure espagnole...
(Maurice Ravel) - Orfeo, L'Orfeo (Claudio Monteverdi)
- Ramiro, L'heure espagnoleL'heure espagnoleL'heure espagnole is a one-act opera, described as a comédie musicale, with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on his play of the same name first performed at the Théâtre de l'Odéon on 28 October 1904...
(Maurice Ravel) - Morales, CarmenCarmenCarmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
(Georges Bizet)
- Pelléas, Pelléas et Mélisande
- Singers:
- Jean PérierJean PérierJean Périer was a French operatic baritone and actor. Although he sang principally within the operetta repertoire, Périer did portray a number of opera roles; mostly within operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giacomo Puccini...
- Pierre BernacPierre BernacPierre Bernac was a French baritone.Born Pierre Bertin in Paris on January 12, 1899, he studied with Reinhold von Wahrlich in Salzburg. he came to music relatively late and gave his first recital in 1921....
- Wolfgang HolzmairWolfgang HolzmairWolfgang Holzmair is an Austrian baritone.Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition,...
- Jacques JansenJacques JansenJacques Jansen was a French baryton-martin singer, particularly associated with the role of Pelléas but also active in operetta and on the concert platform, and later as a teacher.-Life and career:Jansen had a wide musical and artistic education; after studying the violin in Paris, he took lessons...
- Camille MauraneCamille MauraneCamille Maurane, born Camille Moreau , was a French baritone singer. His father was a music teacher and he started singing as a child in the Maîtrise Saint-Evode in Rouen...
- Richard Stilwell
- Jean Périer
Lyric baritone
- Common Range: From the A below low C to the A or A above middle C (A2 to A/A4).
- Description: A sweeter, milder sounding baritone voice, lacking in harshness; lighter and perhaps mellower than the dramatic baritone with a higher tessituraTessituraIn music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...
. It is typically assigned to comic roles.
- Roles:
- Count Almaviva, The Marriage of FigaroThe Marriage of FigaroLe nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Guglielmo, Così fan tutteCosì fan tutteCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Don Giovanni, Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Papageno, The Magic FluteThe Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Marcello, La bohèmeLa bohèmeLa bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
(Giacomo Puccini) - Figaro, The Barber of SevilleThe Barber of SevilleThe Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
(Rossini)
- Count Almaviva, The Marriage of Figaro
- Singers:
- Sir Thomas Allen
- Dietrich Fischer-DieskauDietrich Fischer-DieskauDietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous lieder performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century"...
- Frank GuarreraFrank GuarreraFrank Guarrera was an Italian-American lyric baritone who enjoyed a long and distinguished career at the Metropolitan Opera, singing with the company for a total of 680 performances. He performed 35 different roles at the Met, mostly from the Italian and French repertories, from 1948 through 1976...
- Robert MerrillRobert MerrillRobert Merrill was an American operatic baritone.-Early life:Merrill was born Moishe Miller, later known as Morris Miller, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, to tailor Abraham Miller, originally Milstein, and his wife Lillian, née Balaban, immigrants from Warsaw, Poland.His mother...
- Thomas Hampson
- Wolfgang HolzmairWolfgang HolzmairWolfgang Holzmair is an Austrian baritone.Holzmair studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He won 2nd prize in the baritone class of the 's-Hertogenbosch International Vocal Competition in 1981, and a year later 1st prize in the Musikverein International Lieder Competition,...
- Simon KeenlysideSimon KeenlysideSimon Keenlyside CBE is a British baritone who has had an active international career performing in operas and concerts since the mid 1980s.-Early life and education:...
The kavalierbariton
- Common Range: From the A below low C to the G above middle C (A2 to G4).
- Description: A metallic voice, that can sing both lyric and dramatic phrases, a manly noble baritonal color, with good looks. Not quite as powerful as the Verdi baritone who is expected to have a powerful appearance on stage, perhaps muscular or physically large.
- Roles:
- Don Giovanni, Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Justin Labelle, Wakonda's DreamWakonda's DreamWakonda's Dream is an English-language opera written by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa. It premiered March 7, 2007 at Omaha, Nebraska's Orpheum...
(Anthony Davis) - Count, CapriccioCapriccio (opera)Capriccio is the final opera by German composer Richard Strauss, subtitled "A Conversation Piece for Music". The opera received its premiere performance at the Nationaltheater München on October 28, 1942. Clemens Krauss and Strauss himself wrote the German libretto...
(Richard Strauss) - Giorgio Germont in La traviataLa traviataLa traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
(Giuseppe Verdi)
- Don Giovanni, Don Giovanni
- Singers:
- Eberhard Wächter
Verdi baritone
- Common Range: From the G below low C to the A above middle C (G2 to A4).
- Description: A more specialized voice category and a subset of the Dramatic Baritone, a Verdi baritone refers to a voice capable of singing consistently and with ease in the highest part of the baritone range, sometimes extending up to the C above middle C, or "High C." The Verdi baritone will generally have a lot of squilloSquilloSquillo is a technical term attached to the resonant, trumpet-like sound in the voice of opera singers. The purpose of the squillo is to enable an essentially lyric tone to be heard over thick orchestrations, e.g. in late Verdi, Puccini and Strauss operas...
, or "ping"
- Roles:
- Amonasro, AidaAidaAida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
- Carlo, ErnaniErnaniErnani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
- Conte di Luna, Il trovatoreIl trovatoreIl trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
- Don Carlo di Vargas, La forza del destinoLa forza del destinoLa forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
- Falstaff, FalstaffFalstaff (opera)Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
- Ford Falstaff
- Germont, La traviataLa traviataLa traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
- Macbeth, MacbethMacbeth (opera)Macbeth is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on Shakespeare's play of the same name...
- Renato, Un ballo in mascheraUn ballo in mascheraUn ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
- Rigoletto, RigolettoRigolettoRigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
- Rodrigo, Don CarlosDon CarlosDon Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
- Simon Boccanegra, Simon BoccanegraSimon BoccanegraSimon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....
- Amonasro, Aida
- Singers:
- Carlos ÁlvarezCarlos Álvarez (baritone)Carlos Álvarez is a Spanish baritone who has had a major international opera career since the early 1990s. His recording of the title role in Isaac Albéniz's Merlin with Plácido Domingo as King Arthur won a Latin Grammy Award in 2001, and his recording of the role of Ford in Giuseppe Verdi's...
- Ettore BastianiniEttore BastianiniEttore Bastianini was an Italian opera singer who was particularly associated with the operas of Verdi. He had a prolific international career between 1945 and 1965 which was cut short by throat cancer. He began his professional career as a bass working in opera houses throughout Italy and in...
- Renato BrusonRenato BrusonRenato Bruson is an Italian operatic baritone. Bruson is widely considered one of the most important Verdi baritones of the late 20th and early 21st century. He was born in Granze near Padua, Italy.-Biography and career:...
- Piero CappuccilliPiero CappuccilliPiero Cappuccilli was an Italian operatic baritone, particularly associated with Verdi roles, especiallyMacbeth and Simon Boccanegra; he was renowned for his extraordinary breath control and smooth legato, and is widely regarded as one of the finest Italian baritones of the second half of the 20th...
- Tito GobbiTito GobbiTito Gobbi was an Italian operatic baritone with an international reputation.-Biography:Tito Gobbi was born in Bassano del Grappa and studied law at the University of Padua before he trained as a singer. Giulio Crimi, a well-known Italian tenor of a previous generation, was Gobbi's teacher in Rome...
- Nicolae HerleaNicolae HerleaNicolae Herlea is a Romanian operatic baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially the role of Rossini's Figaro, which he sang around 550 times during his career....
- Dmitri HvorostovskyDmitri HvorostovskyDmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky , is a leading baritone opera singer from Russia.Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. He studied at the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts under Yekatherina Yofel and made his debut at Krasnoyarsk Opera House, in the role of Marullo in Rigoletto...
- Sherrill MilnesSherrill MilnesSherrill Milnes is an American operatic baritone most famous for his Verdi roles. From 1965 until 1997 he was associated with the Metropolitan Opera....
- Titta RuffoTitta RuffoTitta Ruffo , born as Ruffo Titta Cafiero, was an Italian opera star who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" , he was greatly admired, even by rival baritones, such as Giuseppe De Luca, who said of Ruffo: "His was not a voice, it was a miracle" Titta Ruffo (9...
- Seymour SchwartzmanSeymour SchwartzmanSeymour Schwartzman was an American cantor and opera singer. He was a principal baritone at New York City Opera where he sang over thirty roles and also performed internationally in opera houses and on the concert stage...
- Leonard WarrenLeonard WarrenLeonard Warren was a famous American opera singer. A baritone, he was a leading artist for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.-Biography:...
- Ingvar WixellIngvar WixellIngvar Wixell was a Swedish baritone who had an active international career in operas and concerts from 1955-2003. He mostly sang roles from the Italian repertory, and, according to The New York Times, "was best known for his steady-toned, riveting portrayals of the major baritone roles of...
- Giorgio ZancanaroGiorgio ZancanaroGiorgio Zancanaro is an Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, especially Verdi.He studied in his native Verona with Maria Palanda, and was revealed at the Verdi Competition in Busseto in 1969. He made his official operatic debut the following year in Mantua, as...
- Vladimir ChernovVladimir ChernovVladimir Chernov is a Russian baritone, particularly associated with the Russian and Italian opera repertories.-Early life:...
- Carlos Álvarez
Dramatic baritone
- Common Range: From the G half an octave below low C to the G above middle C (G2 to G4).
- Description: A voice that is richer and fuller, and sometimes harsher, than a lyric baritone and with a darker quality. This category corresponds roughly to the Heldenbariton in the German fachFachThe German Fach system is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices...
system except that some Verdi baritone roles are not included. The primo passaggio and secondo passaggio of both the Verdi and Dramatic Baritone are at Bb and Eb respectively, hence the differentiation is based more heavily on timbre and tessitura. Accordingly, roles that fall into this category tend to have a slightly lower tessitura than typical Verdi baritone roles, only rising above an F at the moments of greatest intensity. Many of the PucciniGiacomo PucciniGiacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
roles fall into this category. However, it is important to note, that for all intents and purposes, a Verdi Baritone is simply a Dramatic Baritone with greater ease in the upper tessitura (Verdi Baritone roles center approximately a minor third higher). Because the Verdi Baritone is sometimes seen as subset of the Dramatic Baritone, some singers perform roles from both sets of repertoire. Similarly, the lower tessitura of these roles allow them frequently to be sung by bass-baritones.
- Role
- Jack Rance, La fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
(Giacomo Puccini) - Scarpia, ToscaToscaTosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
(Giacomo Puccini) - Nabucco, NabuccoNabuccoNabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
(Giuseppe Verdi) - Iago, OtelloOtelloOtello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
(Giuseppe Verdi) - Escamillo, Carmen (Bizet)
- Jack Rance, La fanciulla del West
- Singers:
- Norman Bailey
- Peter KajlingerPeter KajlingerPeter Kajlinger is a Swedish operatic baritone. Kajlinger grew up in a family of musicians. He made his debut in La bohème at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm at the age of 11.-Career:...
- Sergei LeiferkusSergei LeiferkusSergei Leiferkus is an operatic baritone from Russia, known for his dramatic technique and powerful voice particularly in Russian and Italian language repertoire. He is most notable for his roles as Scarpia in Tosca, Iago in Otello, Grand-prétre de Dagon in Samson et Dalila and Simon Boccanegra...
- Juan PonsJuan PonsJoan Pons Álvarez , is a Spanish dramatic baritone, known internationally as Juan Pons.-Career:With his outstandingly successful international début in 1980 at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan with Falstaff, staged by Giorgio Strehler and conducted by Lorin Maazel, Juan Pons has revealed himself as...
- Tom KrauseTom KrauseTom Krause is a Finnish operatic baritone particularly associated with Mozart roles.Born in Helsinki, he first studied medicine, while singing and...
Lyric Low Baritone/Lyric Bass-baritone
- Common Range: From about the F below low C to the F above middle C (F2 to F#4)
Some bass-baritones are baritones, like Friedrich Schorr, George London, James Morris and Bryn Terfel. The following are more often done by lower baritones as opposed to high basses.
- Roles:
- Don Pizarro, FidelioFidelioFidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
by Ludwig van Beethoven - Golaud, Pelléas et MélisandePelléas et Mélisande (opera)Pelléas et Mélisande is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande...
by Claude Debussy - Méphistophélès, FaustFaust (opera)Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
by Charles Gounod - Don Alfonso, Così fan tutteCosì fan tutteCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Figaro, The Marriage of FigaroThe Marriage of FigaroLe nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Don Pizarro, Fidelio
- Singers:
- Thomas QuasthoffThomas QuasthoffThomas Quasthoff is a German bass-baritone. Although his reputation was initially based on his performance of Romantic lieder, Quasthoff has proven to have a remarkable range from the Baroque cantatas of Bach to solo jazz improvisations.-Biography:Quasthoff was born in Hildesheim, Germany, with...
- Bryn TerfelBryn TerfelBryn Terfel Jones CBE is a Welsh bass-baritone opera and concert singer. Terfel was initially associated with the roles of Mozart, particularly Figaro and Leporello, but has subsequently shifted his attention to heavier roles, especially those by Wagner....
- Thomas Quasthoff
Dramatic Bass-baritone/Low Baritone
- Common Range: From about the F below low C to the F above middle C (F2 to F#4)
- Roles:
- Aleko, AlekoAlekoThe Moskvitch 2141, commonly referred to as simply Aleko , is a Russian small class, third group hatchback car that was first announced in 1985 and...
by Sergei Rachmaninoff - Igor, Prince IgorPrince IgorPrince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
by Alexander Borodin - Dutchman, The Flying DutchmanThe Flying Dutchman (opera)Der fliegende Holländer is an opera, with music and libretto by Richard Wagner.Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write "The Flying Dutchman" following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839, but in his 1843...
by Richard Wagner - Hans Sachs, Die Meistersinger von NürnbergDie Meistersinger von NürnbergDie Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
by Richard Wagner - Wotan, Der Ring des NibelungenDer Ring des NibelungenDer Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
by Richard Wagner - Amfortas, ParsifalParsifalParsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
by Richard Wagner
- Aleko, Aleko
- Singers:
- George London
- Hans HotterHans HotterHans Hotter was a German operatic bass-baritone, admired internationally after World War II for the power, beauty, and intelligence of his singing, especially in Wagner operas. He was extremely tall and his appearance was striking because of his high, narrow face, wide mouth, and big, aquiline nose...
- Friedrich SchorrFriedrich SchorrFriedrich Schorr , was a renowned Austrian-Hungarian bass-baritone opera singer of Jewish origin. He later became a naturalized American....
Baryton-noble
- Description: French for noble baritone and describes a part that requires a noble bearing, smooth vocalisation and forceful declamation, all in perfect balance. This category originated in the Paris OperaParis OperaThe Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
, but it greatly influenced VerdiGiuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
(Don Carlo in ErnaniErnaniErnani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
and La forza del destinoLa forza del destinoLa forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
; Count Luna in Il trovatoreIl trovatoreIl trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
; Simon BoccanegraSimon BoccanegraSimon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....
) and Wagner as well (Wotan; Amfortas).
Baritone roles in opera
- Aleko, Aleko
- Alberich, SiegfriedSiegfried (opera)Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
- Albert, WertherWertherWerther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe....
- Alfio, Cavalleria rusticanaCavalleria rusticanaCavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
- Amfortas, ParsifalParsifalParsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
- Amonasro, AidaAidaAida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
- Ascanio Petrucci, Lucrezia BorgiaLucrezia Borgia (opera)Lucrezia Borgia is a melodramma, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after the play by Victor Hugo, in its turn after the legend of Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia was first performed on 26 December 1833 at La Scala, Milan with...
- Athanaël, ThaïsThaïs (opera)Thaïs is an opera in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet based on the novel Thaïs by Anatole France. It was first performed at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March 1894, starring the American soprano Sybil Sanderson, for whom Massenet had written the title role...
- Barnaba, La GiocondaLa Gioconda (opera)La Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli set to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835...
- Baron Mirko Zeta, The Merry WidowThe Merry WidowThe Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
- Belcore, L'elisir d'amoreL'elisir d'amoreL'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
- Boris Godunov, Boris GodunovBoris Godunov (opera)Boris Godunov is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky . The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar during the Time of Troubles,...
- Chorèbe, Les TroyensLes TroyensLes Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...
- Count di Luna, Il trovatoreIl trovatoreIl trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
- Count Monterone, RigolettoRigolettoRigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
- Count Tomsky, The Queen of SpadesThe Queen of Spades (opera)The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...
- Count von Eberbach, Der WildschützDer WildschützDer Wildschütz oder Die Stimme der Natur is a German Komische Oper, or comic opera, in three acts by Albert Lortzing from a libretto by the composer adapted from the comedy Der Rehbock, oder Die schuldlosen Schuldbewussten by August von Kotzebue...
- Dandini, La CenerentolaLa CenerentolaLa Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
- Don Carlo, ErnaniErnaniErnani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Hernani by Victor Hugo. The first production took place at La Fenice Theatre, Venice on 9 March 1844...
- Don Carlo di Vargas, La forza del destinoLa forza del destinoLa forza del destino is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino , by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager. It was first performed...
- Don Giovanni, Don GiovanniDon GiovanniDon Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
- Dr. Malatesta, Don PasqualeDon PasqualeDon Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
- Dr. P., The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a HatThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera)The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman to an English-language libretto by Christopher Rawlence, adapted from the case study of the same name by Oliver Sacks by Nyman, Rawlence, and Michael Morris...
- Duke of Nottingham, Roberto DevereuxRoberto DevereuxRoberto Devereux is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, by Gaetano Donizetti...
- Dunois, The Maid of Orleans
- Eddie Carbone, A View from the Bridge
- Eochaidh, The Immortal HourThe Immortal HourThe Immortal Hour is an opera by English composer Rutland Boughton. Boughton adapted his own libretto from the works of Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym of writer William Sharp....
- Enrico Ashton, Lucia di LammermoorLucia di LammermoorLucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
- Ernesto, Il pirataIl pirataIl pirata is an opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani from a French translation of the tragic play Bertram, or The Castle of St Aldobrando by Charles Maturin...
- Escamillo, CarmenCarmenCarmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
- Eugene Onegin, Eugene OneginEugene Onegin (opera)Eugene Onegin, Op. 24, is an opera in 3 acts , by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Konstantin Shilovsky and the composer and his brother Modest, and is based on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin....
- Falstaff, FalstaffFalstaff (opera)Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
- Figaro, The Barber of SevilleThe Barber of SevilleThe Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
- Ford, FalstaffFalstaff (opera)Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
- Ford, The Merry Wives of WindsorThe Merry Wives of Windsor (opera)The Merry Wives of Windsor is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, based on the play The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare....
- Francisco Goya, Facing GoyaFacing GoyaFacing Goya is an opera in four acts by Michael Nyman on a libretto by Victoria Hardie. It is an expansion of their one-act opera called Vital Statistics from 1987, dealing with such subjects as physiognomy and its practitioners, and also incorporates a musical motif from Nyman's art song, "The...
- Friedrich of Telramund, LohengrinLohengrin (opera)Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
- Fyodor Poyarok, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden FevroniyaThe Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden FevroniyaThe Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya is an opera in four acts by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto was written by Vladimir Belsky, and is based on a combination of two Russian legends: that of St. Fevroniya of Murom, and the city of Kitezh, which became invisible...
- Gérard, Andrea ChénierAndrea ChénierAndrea Chénier is a verismo opera in four acts by the composer Umberto Giordano, set to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It is based loosely on the life of the French poet, André Chénier , who was executed during the French Revolution....
- Giorgio Germont, La traviataLa traviataLa traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
- Golaud, Pelléas et Mélisande
- Guglielmo, Così fan tutteCosì fan tutteCosì fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
- Guglielmo Tell, William TellWilliam Tell (opera)Guillaume Tell is an opera in four acts by Gioachino Rossini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. Based on the legend of William Tell, this opera was Rossini's last, even though the composer lived for nearly forty more years...
- Hamlet, HamletHamlet (opera)Hamlet is an opéra in five acts by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père and Paul Meurice of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.- Ophelia mania in Paris:...
- Hans Heiling, Hans HeilingHans HeilingHans Heiling is a German Romantic opera in 3 acts with prologue by Heinrich Marschner with a libretto by Eduard Devrient, who also sang the title role at the première which occurred at the Königliche Hofoper , Berlin on 24 May 1833, and went on to become his most successful opera...
- Herr von Faninal, Der RosenkavalierDer RosenkavalierDer Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
- High Priest of Dagon, Samson and DelilahSamson and Delilah (opera)Samson and Delilah , Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire...
- Horace Tabor, The Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby DoeThe Ballad of Baby Doe is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory...
- Iago, OtelloOtelloOtello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
- Igor Svyatoslavich, Prince IgorPrince IgorPrince Igor is an opera in four acts with a prologue. It was composed by Alexander Borodin. The composer adapted the libretto from the East Slavic epic The Lay of Igor's Host, which recounts the campaign of Russian prince Igor Svyatoslavich against the invading Polovtsian tribes in 1185...
- Ivan Mazepa, MazeppaMazeppa (opera)Mazeppa, properly Mazepa , is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Victor Burenin and is based on Pushkin's poem Poltava....
- Jack Rance, La fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del WestLa fanciulla del West is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, based on the play The Girl of the Golden West by the American author David Belasco. Its highly-publicised premiere occurred in New York City in 1910...
- Jochanaan, SalomeSalome (opera)Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
- John Styx, Orpheus in the UnderworldOrpheus in the UnderworldOrphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....
- Jupiter, Orpheus in the UnderworldOrpheus in the UnderworldOrphée aux enfers is an opéra bouffon , or opéra féerie in its revised version, by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux....
- Kilian, Der FreischützDer FreischützDer Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
- Kochubey, MazeppaMazeppa (opera)Mazeppa, properly Mazepa , is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto was written by Victor Burenin and is based on Pushkin's poem Poltava....
- Krušina, The Bartered BrideThe Bartered BrideThe Bartered Bride is a comic opera in three acts by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, to a libretto by Karel Sabina. The opera is considered to have made a major contribution towards the development of Czech music. It was composed during the period 1863–66, and first performed at the...
- Kurwenal, Tristan und IsoldeTristan und IsoldeTristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
- Le Comte de Nevers, Les HuguenotsLes HuguenotsLes Huguenots is a French opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most popular and spectacular examples of the style of grand opera. The opera is in five acts and premiered in Paris in 1836. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps....
- Le Comte de Saint-Bris, Les HuguenotsLes HuguenotsLes Huguenots is a French opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most popular and spectacular examples of the style of grand opera. The opera is in five acts and premiered in Paris in 1836. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps....
- Lescaut, Manon LescautManon Lescaut (Puccini)Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The story is based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost....
- Lescaut, ManonManonManon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
- Lionel, The Maid of Orleans
- Lord Cockburn, Fra DiavoloFra Diavolo (opera)Fra Diavolo, ou L'hôtellerie de Terracine is an opéra comique in three acts by the French composer Daniel Auber, from a libretto by Auber's regular collaborator Eugène Scribe...
- Lord Enrico Ashton, Lucia di LammermoorLucia di LammermoorLucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
- Lord Guglielmo Cecil, Maria StuardaMaria StuardaMaria Stuarda is a tragic opera, , in two acts, by Gaetano Donizetti, to a libretto by Giuseppe Bardari, based on Friedrich Schiller's 1800 play Maria Stuart....
- Marcello, La bohèmeLa bohèmeLa bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
- Marullo, RigolettoRigolettoRigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
- Mercutio, Roméo et JulietteRoméo et JulietteRoméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...
- Nabucco, NabuccoNabuccoNabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
- Ottokar, Der FreischützDer FreischützDer Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
- Paolo Albiani, Simon BoccanegraSimon BoccanegraSimon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....
- Papageno, The Magic FluteThe Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
- Peter, Hänsel und Gretel
- Prince Afron, The Golden CockerelThe Golden CockerelThe Golden Cockerel is an opera in three acts, with short prologue and even shorter epilogue, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Its libretto, by Vladimir Belsky, derives from Alexander Pushkin's 1834 poem The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, which in turn is based on two chapters of Tales of the Alhambra by...
- Prince Vyazminsky, The Oprichnik
- Prince Yeletsky, The Queen of SpadesThe Queen of Spades (opera)The Queen of Spades, Op. 68 is an opera in 3 acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. The premiere took place in 1890 in St...
- Prince Nikita Kurlyatev, The Enchantress
- Prosdocimo, Il turco in ItaliaIl turco in ItaliaIl turco in Italia is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The Italian-language libretto was written by Felice Romani...
- Raimbaud, Le comte OryLe comte OryLe comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
- Ruggiero, La JuiveLa JuiveLa Juive is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to an original French libretto by Eugène Scribe; it was first performed at the Opéra, Paris, on February 23, 1835.-Composition history:...
- Rigoletto, RigolettoRigolettoRigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
- Rodrigue, Don CarlosDon CarlosDon Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...
- Scarpia, ToscaToscaTosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900...
- Sharpless, Madama ButterflyMadama ButterflyMadama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
- Sherasmin, OberonOberon (opera)Oberon, or The Elf King's Oath is a 3-act romantic opera in English with spoken dialogue and music by Carl Maria von Weber. The libretto by James Robinson Planche was based on a German poem, Oberon, by Christoph Martin Wieland, which itself was based on the epic romance Huon de Bordeaux, a French...
- Simon, Simon BoccanegraSimon BoccanegraSimon Boccanegra is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra by Antonio García Gutiérrez....
- Sir Riccardo Forth, I puritaniI puritaniI puritani is an opera in three acts by Vincenzo Bellini. It was his last opera. Its libretto is by Count Carlo Pepoli, based on Têtes rondes et Cavaliers by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine, which is in turn based on Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality. It was first produced at...
- Tonio, PagliacciPagliacciPagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
- Tutor, Le comte OryLe comte OryLe comte Ory is an opéra written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera Il viaggio a Reims written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X...
- Valentin, FaustFaust (opera)Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
- Wolfram von Eschenbach, TannhäuserTannhäuser (opera)Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
- Wozzeck, WozzeckWozzeckWozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
- Zurga, Les pêcheurs de perlesLes pêcheurs de perlesLes pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was first performed on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run...
Baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan
- Archibald Grosvenor, PatiencePatience (opera)Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
- Captain Corcoran, H.M.S. PinaforeH.M.S. PinaforeH.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
- Dr. Daly, The SorcererThe SorcererThe Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
- John Wellington-Wells, The Sorcerer
- Ko-Ko, The MikadoThe MikadoThe Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations...
- Lord Mountararat, IolantheIolantheIolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh collaboration of the fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan....
- Ludwig, The Grand DukeThe Grand DukeThe Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel, is the final Savoy Opera written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, their fourteenth and last opera together. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on March 7, 1896, and ran for 123 performances...
- Major-General Stanley, The Pirates of PenzanceThe Pirates of PenzanceThe Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
- Reginald Bunthorne, PatiencePatience (opera)Patience; or, Bunthorne's Bride, is a comic opera in two acts with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. First performed at the Opera Comique, London, on 23 April 1881, it moved to the 1,292-seat Savoy Theatre on 10 October 1881, where it was the first theatrical production in the...
- Rudolph, The Grand DukeThe Grand DukeThe Grand Duke; or, The Statutory Duel, is the final Savoy Opera written by librettist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, their fourteenth and last opera together. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on March 7, 1896, and ran for 123 performances...
- Sir Despard Murgatroyd, RuddigoreRuddigoreRuddigore; or, The Witch's Curse, originally called Ruddygore, is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It is one of the Savoy Operas and the tenth of fourteen comic operas written together by Gilbert and Sullivan...
- Sir Joseph Porter, HMS Pinafore
- Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd (as Robin Oakapple), Ruddigore
- Strephon, Iolanthe
- The Lord Chancellor, Iolanthe
- Samuel, The Pirates of Penzance
Baritone voices in other music
In barbershop musicBarbershop music
Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era , is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture...
, the baritone part sings in a similar range to the Lead (singing the melody) however usually singing lower than the lead. A barbershop baritone has a specific and specialized role in the formation of the four-part harmony that characterizes the style. Because barbershop singers can also be female, there is consequently such a singer (at least in barbershop singing) as a female baritone.
The baritone singer is often the one required to support or "fill" the bass sound (typically by singing the fifth
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
above the bass root) and to complete a chord. On the other hand, the baritone will occasionally find himself harmonizing above the melody, which calls for a tenor-like quality. Because the baritone fills the chord, the part is often not very melodic.
In bluegrass music
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
, the melody line is called the lead. Tenor is sung an interval of a third above the lead. Baritone is the fifth of the scale that has the lead as a tonic, and may be sung below the lead, or even above the lead (and the tenor), in which case it is called "high baritone". Conversely, the more "soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
" baritones have the more traditional timbre, but sing in a vocal range that is closer to the tenor vocal range. Some of these singers include Tom Jones
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...
Michael McDonald
Michael McDonald (singer)
Michael McDonald is a five-time Grammy Award winning American singer and songwriter. McDonald is known for a soulful baritone singing style and a multi-octave range. He began his career singing back-up vocals with Steely Dan...
, and Levi Stubbs
Levi Stubbs
Levi Stubbles , better known by the stage name Levi Stubbs, was an American baritone singer, best known as the lead vocalist of the Motown R&B group Four Tops...
of the Four Tops
Four Tops
The Four Tops are an American vocal quartet, whose repertoire has included doo-wop, jazz, soul music, R&B, disco, adult contemporary, hard rock, and showtunes...
.
Further sources
- Faure, Jean-Baptiste (1886) La voix et le chant: traité pratique, Heugel, published in English translation as The Voice and Singing (Francis Keeping and Roberta Prada, translators), Vox Mentor, 2005.
- Matheopoulos, H. (1989) Bravo – The World's Great Male Singers Discuss Their Roles, Victor Gollancz Ltd.
- Bruder, Harold, Liner Notes, Maurice Renaud: The Complete Gramophone Recordings 1901–1908, Marston Records, 1997. (Discusses Renaud and many of his baritone contemporaries as well the stylistic change in operatic singing at the turn of the 20th century.) Retrieved 4 March 2008.