quoting me, karen wrote:
perhaps it is easier to distinguish between bass roles and
baritone
> roles after verdi as the two seem to be more polarized. the lower male
> roles before verdi, for the most part, tended to be higher or tended to be
> lower with less of a distinction. even though i can't think of one at the
> moment, there were bass roles that did seem to demand more than the post
> verdian bass, both in range and flexibility but, i would guess that these
> were obviously for a special singer.
she went on to make the comment:
"This viewpoint seems to be very circumscribed, i.e., Italo-centric.
If you
look at Russian operatic repertoire, the bass and bass-baritone roles are
virtually always as if not more demanding than the baritone and tenor
roles (with notable exceptions in some Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev operas)."
karen,
yes, my comments were made with italian opera in mind. i don't know
if verdi had the same effect on the writing for lower voiced males by
composers of other national styles.
looking at mozart's operas, while many of the roles can easily fit
into the older generic label of 'bass', there are some roles that are clearly
specifically bass (sarastro, osmin and maybe the commendatore). rossini's
figaro is clearly high baritone.
i am under the impression that a lot of 18th and 19th century operatic
writing for lower voiced males is mostly within the range of A to E, a range
not particularly challenging to either bass or baritone. verdi is the first
composer, that i can think of, who consistantly wrote for a high baritone.
the verdi baritone is almost always singing in the range of C to G. this is
much more of a challenge for a baritone and unreasonable for a bass. after
verdi, particularly with the verismo composers, we see a lot more of these
high baritone roles.
i don't think such a distinct change in writing for bass and baritone
exists in the writing of composers of other nationalities. one can
certainly point to those roles that were exceptional. even in italian
opera, one can point to rossini's figaro as being as demanding in range for
the baritone as verdi was but, it was an exception to rossini's writing, not
the norm.
mike
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