appreciating opera, part I
the male voices explained
by patricia hammond | march 1999
The opera world is riddled with strange words - "squillo", "tessitura", "sprechstimme", and on and on in just about anything but English, it seems. It just adds to the notion that opera is for a very few people who somehow already know all that stuff.
But one thing the Three Tenors did was to forcibly prove that thousands can enjoy operatic singing without knowing a coloratura from a spinto. The Tenors got exposure, and people who heard and enjoyed knew they were tenor fans.
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However, even casual opera fans benefit from a more detailed understanding of voice types.
The other day I spoke with a man who commented that although he liked Pavarotti, Carreras & Domingo, he wished that they would sing softer and higher but not belt the high notes. When I played him the young Ferruccio Tagliavini singing Donizetti's "Una Furtiva Lagrima" he was ecstatic, and immediately bought the CD. This gentleman knew he preferred a Lyric Tenor to the Dramatic or Spinto Tenor exemplified by the Three. But he couldn't name it. |
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I always say that for a new opera lover, choosing what to listen to is half music (composer, style and era) and half singer. You can love Verdi's operas, but if Renata Scotto makes your ears shrivel, you won't enjoy her Traviata one bit. This principle is especially true of recital CDs. "Monserrat Caballe sings Puccini arias" is great if you love Puccini and Monserrat Caballe.
Of course, nobody can tell you who to like. Voices are as individual as perfume, and almost as impossible to recommend to someone else. Sampler discs ("Ten Top Sopranos") can be useful, but it's also helpful to be able to understand voice categories. For example, if someone loves Kathleen Battle, they'll probably love Sylvia McNair, because both are light lyric sopranos.
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So I'm going to describe what that is. Men first.
To start with tenors, there are three main categories: Lyric, Dramatic and Helden (the German word for "heroic"). The Lyric Tenor is my personal favorite. These men just float their notes effortlessly, spinning out long smooth phrases. They are most at home in the "bel canto" operas of Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini and the operas of Mozart. These operas were written at a time when cultivated voices became more plentiful, singers and audiences valued beauty of tone and composers wrote melodious music to show it off. The high, feminine Castrato (known to most through the movie "Farinelli") had fallen from favor for a variety of reasons, and the tenor was more suited for the male lead in romantic story lines because, among other reasons, his voice could move in parallel lines an octave below the soprano, making for some gorgeous love duets. Lyric Tenors (should) rarely force their tones, and sing high notes in a rather feminine manner, using "head voice". |
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The Dramatic Tenor came about with composers who used larger orchestras and required tenors for warlike, as well as romantic, roles. These rather healthy-looking men have a darker sound, and sing their high Cs with full force from the chest. Audiences thrill, or wince, depending on the tenor and on whether he's having a good day. Verdi composed a lot for this kind of singer.
Heldentenors, the most recent (1860's) major development in the tenor categories, developed out of a need to represent the larger-than-life heroes of Wagner's larger-than-life Music Dramas. No mere oom-pah-pah to yell over here; huge, soaring orchestral soundscapes issuing forth continuously, and long, demanding arches of very important text to sing. The constitution that a Heldentenor must possess to sing like this for four hours at a stretch I leave to your imagination. Heldentenors tend to be huge, in height and girth. Often Heldentenors start life as a Baritone, because the power of their voices extends down as well as up. These singers don't seem to exist much anymore. |
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To name names, I'd say that the Lyric Tenor description fits John McCormack, Tito Schipa, Ferruccio Tagliavini and most recently, Raoul Gimenez; the Dramatic Tenor fits Enrico Caruso, Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli and Domingo; and the Heldentenor Set Svanholm, Lauritz Melchior and Jon Vickers.
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Singers often cross over, and a "spinto" (pushed) tenor is one who, like Pavarotti, started out as a Lyric Tenor with a bit more heft in the voice, and couldn't resist singing the Dramatic repertoire, singing the high notes in full voice. Giuseppe di Stefano did the same. Many regret their decisions. Jussi Björling and Nicolai Gedda were versatile enough to alter their voices to fit both styles when needed, in my opinion. Domingo, while not exactly a Heldentenor, can do Wagner as well as Verdi.
It's common to hear different voice types take on the same roles. These days it's rare to hear a real Lyric Tenor at all. They all seem to turn into Spintos in order to be more versatile. I think that the popularity of Andrea Bocelli points to a real hunger for lighter tenors, microphone-aided or not. |
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The Baritone is a more common voice type, and also the quality most associated with men's speaking voices. Rich and resonant, but not as flexible as a tenor, the Baritone voice didn't ornament as easily and thus wasn't used very often by Baroque opera composers except in humorous contexts, "Buffo" in Italian: Old misers, cuckolds, bumbling oafs. Mozart caused a lot of double-takes when he made sex-symbol Don Giovanni a Baritone, as well as Figaro and Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro. Mozart's music was a different style, and he was able to use the Baritone to convey virility, comedy and several other states. In the Romantic operas, while the tenor was singing love duets with the soprano, Baritones made their way in as villains, confidantes, or rival lovers.
Then with the operas of Verdi and others like him, new demands were placed on Baritones. Ringing high notes, and a richer and more powerful middle range were required to portray more dramatic and climactic situations. This was Grand Opera, and all voice types adjusted. |
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In French opera, however, the lighter baritone stayed on, and Debussy's Pelléas was one of many such roles.
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One feature of the Baritone is his versatility. He is just as likely to be happy singing lieder (songs) and researching neglected song composers as he is on the opera stage. Some say that baritones in general are more intelligent than tenors, the reason being that they must offer something extra to make a name for themselves.
Light Baritones are difficult to name. Again nowadays everyone wants to be able to sing everything and baritones are no exception. Erich Kunz was a wonderful light baritone in post-war Germany, and Gérard Souzay, who was not only an opera singer, but later a great specialist in French and German art song. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who changed his voice from dark to lighter at will, sang Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, and then became what most regard to be the lieder singer of the century. His closest modern-day equivalent is Thomas Hampson, who is also an intellectual with amazing vocal versatility and agility. |
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For the heavier and more powerful Verdi Baritones, I'd name the Italian Apollo Granforte and the American Lawrence Tibbett for the 30s and 40s respectively, Robert Merrill and Tito Gobbi for the 50s and 60s and Piero Cappuccilli for the 70s. Now, Dmitri Hvorostovsky appears to be the new one around.
The term Bass-Baritone is rather self-explanatory. A slightly darker voice, used in Wagner, but of course able to sing most baritone roles. Wagner described them as "light basses". |
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Bass-Baritones this century include Hans Hotter, whose Schubert recordings are among my favorite, Cesare Siepi, Nicolai Ghiaurov, George London and right now, Samuel Ramey and Bryn Terfel.
True Basses are as rare as Baritones are common. Many a Bass-Baritone is making a living singing Bass parts. (and "bass" is not pronounced like the fish!) That extra depth and resonance is hard to come by. It's apparent when a true Bass speaks; the distinctive, powerful timbre is unmistakable. One hears the occasional bass voice doing radio, TV or movie commentary; James Earl Jones springs to mind. The bass voice has been used for various functions over time. Early church music used it for the very important lowest line in unaccompanied choral singing - the "bass line" - and even Monteverdi, the earliest well-known opera composer used a bass to play Charon, the shadowy figure who rows dead souls across the river Styx to Hades. Then there's something funny about a heavy bass voice singing comedy, and buffo basses were used a lot in Italy. |
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Mozart used a Bass for the ghost of one of Don Giovanni's would-be fathers-in-law who drags him to Hell in the final moments of the opera. Sarastro, the priest-like authority figure in Mozart's Magic Flute, and Mephistopheles in his appearances under Berlioz', Gounod's and Boito's music, is a Bass.
Basses can fall into one of two main categories: Basso-Cantante, suited to singing flowing lines, and Basso-Profundo, who growls even deeper, conveying tragedy, brutality, force, age, or all four at once.
| The suaveness of Mephistopheles is suited to the former, as is Escamillo in Carmen. Basso-Profundos are required for the aforementioned bringer of Don Giovanni's eternal punishment and Wagner's giant/dragon Fafner in his Ring Cycle, to name a couple. For the complex and tormented Tsar Boris Godunov, great power and depth are required along with the range and flow of a Basso-Cantante. The new recording of that opera on Philips is brilliant in every way except for the problem with the title role. There really isn't a singer alive who can do it. One must listen to old recordings of past greats like Basso-Cantantes Ezio Pinza and Alexander Kipnis, the versatile Basses Boris Christoff and Feodor Chaliapin, and Basso-Profundo Gottlob Frick, and that phenomenon Paul Robeson, who unfortunately never got the chance to sing much opera. |
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There is a hilarious send-up of the Three Tenors on the Finlandia label called "Three Finnish Basses", who are all quite acceptable.
To jump several notes up, and to finish with the male voice category that is growing in popularity at an alarming rate, I'll now talk about the Countertenor. This most resembles a low female voice, but with a strange sexlessness, a haunting quality that sets it apart. |
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Every man has what's called a "falsetto" voice-the highest sound he can produce, usually for a comical sound effect. Some pop singers, like David Bowie, will use it as part of their range. Lyric Tenors like Tagliavini and Tauber subtly incorporate it into some of their softer high notes, when it is usually called "head voice" (The sound seems to resonate in the head. Try it.)
An increasing number of men are developing their falsetto, and those who would be just another tenor are finding extraordinary countertenor voices underneath. In German theological tradition, the male alto (as they are also known) was symbolic of the Holy Ghost because of its sexlessness and otherworldliness. It was also legal, while the castrato wasn't. Bach wrote lots of gorgeous music for the Countertenor. |
When the castrato fever hit Europe, and I won't go into that here, operatic roles were written that could be sung by women, ungelded male altos, or castrati. Odd, I know. But I guess if one can have a 400 pound diva singing (and presumably acting) the part of a dying consumptive, a woman playing Hercules isn't so weird. And nowadays, only women and countertenors can sing the Castrato's repertoire. Countertenors are even taking over territory usually held by women, such as the alto solos in Handel's Messiah.
In the first half of the 20th century, there were only two major countertenors who made recordings, both of them music scholars: the Englishman Alfred Deller, who also directed ensembles (the Deller Consort), and the American Russell Oberlin, who did a lot of florid Handel arias and Early Music. These men were pioneers, and no real countertenor training tradition had been established (or Baroque instrumental performance tradition, either). Their voices are very distinctive.
Then in the 1970s, when Nicholas Harnoncourt came to make his ground-breaking complete Bach Sacred Cantatas series (now comprising 60 CDs), he had more singers to choose from, and Paul Esswood's contributions to the series are quite beautiful. Soon everybody was forming Baroque ensembles and countertenors were more and more sought-after.
Now Baroque music is more popular than ever; somehow it speaks to people at the turn of the 21st Century, with its bizarre glamour and absurdity mixed with structure.
Even Sacred Baroque music is hugely successful in a world full of agnostics. Bach, who translated comforting religious assurances into even more comforting music, has an audience today far outstripping what must have been his wildest dreams.
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Countertenor Andreas Scholl is something of an idol in Europe, and his Clark Kent looks and gorgeous velvet sound are undeniable. His recording of Bach solo cantatas BWV 170, 54, and 35 is a best-seller. His teacher, René Jacobs, is also a famous countertenor who's had a long career.
Other recent names include David Daniels, Yoshikazu Mera, Derek Lee Ragin, Gérard Lesne and Jochen Kowalski. Each one is distinct, so listen before you buy, if possible. |
And here I'll stop, with the obvious statement that these are guidelines, and as with most human classifications, subjective. Some may insist that Samuel Ramey is a Bass and not a Bass-Baritone; people love to nit-pick, and it can be fun at times. Operatic traditions of different countries offer many further sub-classifications, and on top of that, singers can also change mid-career. I have classified them where I thought they were best.
CD Recommendations:
Note: many of these may have to be special-ordered. Make these stores work for a living!
 | Patricia is a classically trained mezzo who now lives and works in the UK. For more information about her, visit patriciahammond.com. |
