A Singer’s Guide to Voices: Baritone
After writing about tenors and mezzos, I thought I might get closer to my own voice, but not too close, and have a look at the Baritone Voice. Now, I know that some people have spent a lot of time telling me over the years that I am not a bass but a lazy baritone, but I hope to point out in the course of this article that this is not true, and that we can come to some sort of conclusion about this most common of all voice types for men. It has been said, with some authority, that 80% of male singers are baritones, and I think that is probably a fair proportion. Tenors and real basses are rare breeds, and those of top quality, quite scarce, but the financial clout of the tenor outweighs all the rest. This is due to several factors; because they sing on the edge of their voices most of the time, the excitement level is high and the visceral thrill of a good tenor hitting a high note is an important element in the success of vocal music. Most of the romantic lead parts are written for tenor, since that voice is perfect for lyrical warmth and erotic expression, and also allows for partnership with the sopranos who can compete (artistically) over the high notes. In addition, in non-romantic music the tenor voice is perfect for narration and storytelling, combining clarity of diction with expressive freedom.
The basses on the other hand are able to express profundity (in a very literal sense) and familial warmth, as well as being best able to show true humanity and tenderness, traits that the more brash tenors with their direct intensity cannot hope to express so well. This is, obviously, a ridiculous generalisation, but it serves to prove a point, and leaves the poor baritone in his 80% position, stuck in the middle.
The current jargon has also added to the confusion by promoting the in-between voice, the bass-baritone, to a prominence not noticed before. The number of descriptions of someone or other as a bass-baritone has rocketed in the last 20 years or so, possibly, but not entirely, caused by the pre-eminence of Bryn Terfel. In the olden days when I was young, and even before, if that can be imagined, singers were almost exclusively categorised using the German system of Fach, especially in Europe. Managements and agents booked singers according to which Fach (or compartment) they represented, and there was little deviation from this model of Teutonic Efficiency. Each standard role was allotted to a Fach, and if a certain singer wanted to sing something outwith that Fach, it was the Devil’s own job to persuade managements to cast him or her. What we now call bass-baritone was denoted by the word Heldenbariton (heroic baritone), by which was meant the big and often very loud Wagner roles, like Hans Sachs and Wotan, Amfortas and Telramund. Other non-German roles in this category would be, for example, Escamillo (‘Carmen’), Amonasro (‘Aida’) and the Grand Inquisitor (‘Don Carlo’). Wagner himself never used this descriptive term, preferring to use the phrase ‘Hoher Bass’ (Higher Bass) and I would say that I think I prefer it, as it denotes an extension of a bass rather than a version of a baritone. It seems to me that the success of this nomenclature rather depends on the success of the singer in extending his normal range into another. Some, like John Tomlinson, who is, in my opinion, a true bass, has had great success in stretching upwards to sing Hans Sachs and Wotan. Gwynne Howell, for my money the best British bass of the last 50 years, tried to sing Sachs, but never successfully, as it lay consistently too high. In my small way, I was often cited as a future Sachs, but knew right from the start that it was too high. Similarly, I was delighted and honoured to sing Wotan in the first Longborough Ring around the Millennium, but knew I could only sing it in Jonathan Dove’s reduced version, originally created for City of Birmingham Touring Opera in 1990, in which I had sung Fafner and Hagen, two strictly bass roles. The Longborough Wotan was only possible with a reduced orchestra and a heavily cut score, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here writing about a career which has lasted 20 years after that famous Ring Cycle.
All this explanation is really to tell you what a baritone is not. He is not an extension of a bass, but in many ways, a darker version of a tenor. I read, long ago, an article about the great American baritone, Sherrill Milnes, in which he explained that a proper Verdi baritone should possess a good ringing top B Flat, but never need to use it. As Sherrill might have put it, “there ain’t no basses who can sing a top B Flat!”
A passing note of interest – my divine mentor, the great Hans Hotter, was almost unique in having several careers in one. He started out in the 1930s and 40s as a baritone. There is a recording of him singing the Dutchman in Wagner’s eponymous opera in 1944 with top notes of a power and richness unimaginable, and, in his memoirs, he writes about his successes as Don Giovanni and Amonasro. In 1942, Richard Strauss wrote the role of Olivier (a baritone) for Hotter in his opera, ‘Capriccio’, and recordings of this period reveal a voice of dark majesty, coping with high lying passages with ease. By the 1950s, he was beginning only to sing the Heldenbariton roles, and by the 1960s, certainly in live performances, only bass roles, like Gurnemanz in ‘Parsifal’ and La Roche in ‘Capriccio’ (the bass role, which I have sung with some success in Germany and Canada). The last time he appeared in public, and the only time I heard him live (other than in his music room!), was when he performed the speaking role (Der Sprecher) in Schoenberg’s ‘Gurrelieder’. Typically, even in his eighties, at the most expressive moment, he used his singing voice to heighten the emotion. All this serves to show that Hotter was the exception who proved the rule, and it is best, on the whole, to stick with one’s own Fach (with the occasional breakaway permitted! I wouldn’t have been able to sing Falstaff and the Britten War Requiem otherwise!).
Having thoroughly confused you, dear reader, perhaps we can take a look at some of the great baritones who have thrilled us over the last 70 years or so. The true baritone voice is a fantastic instrument which can convey anger, pride, evil (many times), vengeance, and, occasionally, hilarity. Rarely is it asked to be very romantic, or sexy, or particularly kind. Nobility it can do, although a bass is usually better, and grandeur certainly. It can serve a different purpose in baroque and modern music, and we’ll look at that towards the end.
Who is my favourite baritone? Who is the finest I have heard? Who is the finest I have worked with over the last 40 years? These questions will, probably, be answered over the next few pages, but somehow it is harder to categorise and rank baritones than almost any other voice.
I’m going to start with the baritones who tend to define the genre (if I may be allowed to borrow the trendy mot du jour), the warm 19th century Italian baritone. This category begins roughly with Rossini (the famous “lalalalera” of Figaro in the ‘Barber of Seville’) up to the villains and tricksters of Puccini and the Verismo composers. Much as Pavarotti, unwittingly (or his publicists, wittingly), came to represent in the public’s mind, the operatic tenor, so the Verdi baritone, as we shall call him, has become seen as the template for the baritone voice. Often American, usually handsome in a rugged way, very frequently with flamboyant hair and a bit of a swagger, the Verdi baritone has come to be seen as a clear and marketable type.
The aforementioned Sherrill Milnes was the baritone of the recording studios and world stages in the 1970s when I was becoming obsessed with opera. Having cultivated an image as the country boy who began singing at the wheel of his tractor as he roamed the Prairies, we were encouraged to think of him as an all-American boy, cruising the streets of LA in an open-topped Mustang, catching the eyes of the girls as he passed by. This healthy heterosexuality was a pre-requisite of the image, and the roles he sang matched this machismo – Scarpia, Rigoletto, Posa, Amonasro and Di Luna. Any possibility to add an embellished high note to an aria, often an A or a B Flat, was encouraged by the conductors and recording executives of the time, and, for a while, he dominated, almost as much as Pavarotti and Domingo, in the public’s eye.
You are probably expecting a huge caveat here, a capital letter BUT. However, by and large, the hype was justified, and Milnes was only carrying on a tradition of virile American baritones, with names like Leonard Warren, Lawrence Tibbett and Robert Merrill, who had dominated the world’s opera houses a generation before. There seems to be no reason I can find to explain why they also had to have rather weird names, Lawrence and Leonard, Sherrill and Merrill, but there you are. Milnes possessed a rich and manly voice which moved smoothly through the registers, and was comfortable even at the extremities of range which Verdi wrote for his baritones, and beyond, as tradition has dictated that, often, where a gratuitous high note could be added, the singer was expected to comply. This tradition is now so ingrained that audiences expect both the tenors and baritones to embellish arias in Verdi operas, and, indeed, when Riccardo Muti in the 80s and 90s tried to insist that singers only sang the notes Verdi had written, in recordings and on stage at La Scala, there was a public outcry, and the idea was quietly dropped. After all, if you’ve paid to hear Pavarotti’s High C or Milnes’ Top A, that’s what you want for your dollars or million lire! I only heard Milnes live once, and I must say that he had a splendid voice (he’s now, in 2021, 86), although, after a lifetime of listening to records, I feel he possessed only a limited palette of voice colours, and sometimes produced a dryness of sound which could verge on dullness.
En passant, there is a fascinating anecdote about Leonard Warren, who was singing Don Carlos in Verdi’s ‘La Forza del Destino’ at the old Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1960. The recitative passage before his big aria ‘Urna fatale, begins “Morir. Tremenda Cosa” (To die. What an awful thing!). Apparently, he sang the recitative and the powerful aria with many high notes, extremely well. After the applause died down, he stepped forward, and fell to the ground. The Surgeon, a small role, came in and announced “Lieta novella. E salvo” (Good news. He is saved) which is the baritone’s cue for a tremendous cabaletta (a continuation of the aria, usually faster and also full of high notes). However, cabaletta came there none, as Mr Warren had suffered a fatal heart attack, and had breathed his last!
There has always been a fine tradition of Italian baritones, and this early period of my listening and then performing life, saw the heyday of some of the finest. Tito Gobbi, who became the most famous baritone of the 50s and 60s, renowned as a wonderful singer, and even more as a great singing actor, graced the world’s stages with never to be excelled interpretations of, particularly, Scarpia, Iago and Falstaff. Fortunately, his greatest successes came as the modern age of recordings was taking shape, and we have, preserved for ever, his great performances of these roles. His Scarpia, with Di Stefano and Callas, ranks as one of the finest operatic recordings of all time (although, in 1953, the sound was still mono, but what a sound!), and his recording of Iago in Verdi’s ‘Otello’ from 1960, with Vickers and Rysanek, conducted by Serafin, still thrills with horrible menace. By contrast, his wonderful, life-enhancing Falstaff, with Karajan, from 1956 (when I was just 6 months old!) bubbles with comic brio and panache, and with an unmatched cast, this, for me, is the recording which best reveals the utter brilliance of the elderly Verdi’s creation.
I was privileged to be able to sing Falstaff myself, later in my career. After many productions as Pistola, I was asked to sing the title role in Germany towards the end of the Noughties and repeated it in a completely different production in Canada a few years later. This has been my only attempt at a baritone part, a wise move you may say. Somehow, with a couple of adjustments, I was able to take on the role, and I hope that my vocal limitations, slight but significant, were not sufficient to negate my enormous fun as the Fat Knight (complete with fat suit!), a role I now feel has been my best of all. Basking in the reflected glory of a bass’s intrusion into the baritone repertoire, I’ll bring this article to an end.
Next time, I will look at more recent baritones than Gobbi, and at other singers who have graced the world’s stages in the baritone repertoire.
