Baritone


A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. It is the most common male voice. The term originates from the Greek βαρύτονος, meaning "low sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C in choral music, and from the second G below middle C to the G above middle C in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone, lyric baritone, Kavalierbariton, Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, baryton-noble baritone, and the bass-baritone.

History

The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as baritonans, late in the 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices, but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice.
Baritones took roughly the range as it is known today at the beginning of the 18th century, but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into the 19th century. Many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles. 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 Don Giovanni.

19th century

In theatrical documents, cast lists, and journalistic dispatches that from the beginning of the 19th century till the mid-1820s, the terms primo basso, basse chantante, and basse-taille were often used for men who would later be called baritones. These included the likes of Filippo Galli, Giovanni Inchindi, and Henri-Bernard Dabadie. The basse-taille and the proper bass were commonly confused because their roles were sometimes sung by singers of either actual voice part.
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 emphasize 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. 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 originated the role of Belcore in L'elisir d'amore 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 Macbeth and Rigoletto as well as Germont in La traviata
  • Antonio Superchi, the originator of Don Carlo in Ernani
  • Francesco Graziani, who was the original Don Carlo di Vargas in La forza del destino
  • Leone Giraldoni, the creator of Renato in Un ballo in maschera and the first Simon Boccanegra
  • Enrico Delle Sedie, who was London's first Renato
  • , 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 Don Carlos and later a great vocal pedagogue, too
  • Filippo Coletti, creator of Verdi's Gusmano in Alzira, Francesco in I masnadieri, Germont in the second version of La traviata and for whom Verdi considered writing the opera Lear
  • 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.
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, Giuseppe Kaschmann who, atypically, 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 ; and Antonio Scotti, who came to the Met from Europe in 1899 and remained on the roster of singers until 1933. Antonio Pini-Corsi was the standout Italian buffo baritone in the period between about 1880 and World War I, reveling in comic opera roles 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, Victor Maurel, Paul Lhérie, and Maurice Renaud. 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 Noté 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. 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 at his request for the London production in 1864 so that the leading baritone would have an aria. 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, the creator of Posa in Verdi's original French-language version of Don Carlos''. It is doubtful, however, that Faure made the cylinders. However, a contemporary of Faure's, Antonio Cotogni, —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.

Subtypes

There are 19th-century references in the musical literature to certain baritone subtypes. These include the light and tenorish baryton-Martin, named after French singer Jean-Blaise Martin, and the deeper, more powerful Heldenbariton 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 operettas 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, Mephistopheles in La Damnation de Faust , 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 and Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor .
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, as well as Portugal's Francisco D'Andrade and Sweden's John Forsell.
The verismo baritone, Verdi baritone, and other subtypes are mentioned below, though not necessarily in 19th-century context.