The Bass-Baritone Voice
Playlist - 22 Songs
When an opera composer needs a singer with the low notes of a bass as well as the sustaining power, agility, and range of a baritone, they send for a bass-baritone. It’s as much about color as range: bass-baritones possess a vocal richness that’s neither as black-hued as a deep bass or as brazen as a baritone. If a male operatic character has a lot to say—and they’re something more than just a straightforward villain or clown—chances are they’ll be sung by a bass-baritone.
So the witty, no-nonsense hero of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is a bass-baritone role; so too is the heart-throb Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen and Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca (a villain, true, but a villain with brains). Gilbert and Sullivan cast bass-baritones as some of their drollest characters.
The supreme bass-baritone roles are the complex, morally conflicted creations of Wagner: the troubled deity Wotan in The Ring, and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger. Demanding huge stamina as well as profound psychological insight, the great bass-baritone roles lack the outward glamor of their tenor or soprano colleagues—but more often than not, they’re both the head and the heart of the opera.
Apple Music
Wybrani wykonawcy
Na playliście The Bass-Baritone Voice znajdziesz wykonawców Sir Georg Solti, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Eric Owens i wiele więcej