The "young deep-voiced male tired of everyone being surprised every time they open their mouth" was definitely me. One of the reasons I got into opera was....there was nothing else for me to sing (like....seriously. How many deep voiced males are there really in popular music? People's idea of a "deep male voice" today is like Josh Groban who isn't even a baritone).
Maybe Rammstein? That's metal though. But yeah I get it. I am mostly a musical theatre nerd. I could hardly think of any male character with bass range. Maybe some of Sondheim's shows. Sweeney Todd is usually played by a bass baritone, such as Bryn Terfel. But even that requires a G4 flat, which might be a little bit high for bass? Maybe you could try Emile De Becque in South Pacific. The highest note is E4 I think?
That's indeed why I also got into classical music. There's a more diverse variety of singers in classical music than in pop music I believe. Also, there are plenty of deeper voices in non-classical music, plenty of them with even deeper voices than Josh Groban, just not specifically within the genre of pop music in most cases.
I know many young basses. They hate being uncommon and pushed to sound less bass-like because basses aren’t common in their age. I don’t see why one should push a young singer to sound younger than they sound naturally. A classical singer should always sound DARK and LOUD
Also, a singer who can sing lyric baritone and cavaliere baritone is most likely not able to sing Verdibaritone and vice versa. I know a young bass-baritone, who will most likely also sing some full-dramatic baritone-repertoire in the future, but never Papageno or Figaro.
There's really only one kind of baritone. All the old ones sang everything north of Wotan, and the Italians that did sing Wotan still sang in La favorite.@@mathildehb0076
@@JackInABeanstalk98 «How is “many young basses” more contradictory than “many young tenors”?! They aren’t as common and many of them start off as baritones. “Young” as in their 20s. They often mature faster than tenors do. Also well trained young baritones struggle less with the high G than tenors do with the high C. But tenors still need the C more often than the baritones and basses need the G. This often leads to teachers misvoicing their students at a relatively young age and giving them harmful repertoire. “You are probably just a wagnerian tenor”. This has happened too often, and they get short careers, and lose their voice in the end. This is why young singers should study more art song than opera and gradually learn more operatic repertoire when they are in their mid 20s.
***OMG, phenomenal VIDEO! Thank yo so much for this stunning survey, very thoughtfully done! I love your associations and metaphors that explain each FACH! I also have a similar style in my own teaching of languages. Keep it up soul sister!! :) ***
i think that in the tenor is missing the light tenor (even if you said Almaviva). For me Florez is a light tenor while pavarotti is a lyric (or lirico leggero but not light)
I remember you from a masterclass with Gerard finley you were amazing so excited to see you again. I would have made a distinctiom between dramatic and helden tenor. In terms of roles, They are not the same because the dramatic tenor is Italianate and typically a higher tesstitura, (Othello and la traviata - alfredo have the same tessit) and massive high notes. Heldentenor have huge voice but spend a majority of singing in a baritone range. Their middle voices are required to be larger than the dramatic tenor. And I'm not talking about singers but rather the roles.
This video is fantastic in it's explanation of fachs! As a baritone I did notice a couple issues in that section though. First I just noticed that your example for the cantabile/kavalier baritone was Samuel Ramey, who is a bass. I know you want to make it clear that fachs are roles, but his voice might not give the right impression of that fach, especially considering he did not and could not sing any of the other roles you listed for that fach.
Agreed, roles like Marcello, Don Giovanni, Dr. Malatesta or Sharpless are far better examples for a Kavalier baritone than Escamillo (who is honestly something in between bass-baritone and kavalierbariton).
I was raised in the Greek Orthodox church, but I actually also had the privvilege to hear, see, and feel a few Oktavists and Bassos Profondos singing hymns deeply, loudly, and resonantly just a few meters, maybe centimiters from me, right to my face
The biggest missed examples in this video would be Ettore Bastianini as the standard for Verdi Baritones, and Franco Corelli for Spinto Tenors. Both of them have such a big cutting voice they pretty much set the standard for their roles.
Bastianini is a good example. His Verdi repertoire is superb. Bryan Terfel is a bass baritone. Franco Corelli is more like a dramatic tenor, so is Lauri Volpi. They are usually classified as spinto but I usually put them on the dramatic side. Spinto is a type of lyric tenor. Singers like Corelli sounds a little bit too much in some lyric repertoires. Placido Domingo is just a textbook spinto when he’s younger.
I am such a big fan of spinto tenors and heldentenors because their heroic high notes are exciting. Same goes for dramatic tenors too. I also find the lyric tenors to be adorable by the way they sound when they sing amazing phrases especially in the Donizetti aria Florez sang. However Florez was considered a leggero tenor than a lyric tenor even though he is my favorite singer.
They each have their own quality though. Look around TH-cam - there is a Pavarotti making an absolute meal of "O mon ame" (the aria Florez slays) while Florez cannot drown out the backing in the climax of "Nessun dorma" (Pavarotti's renowned party piece). Its about the type of voice the song is written for - ie the fach.
Thank you very much for the video! I came here to figure out exactly what kind of bass I would be now and (I'm 18, so this can change of course but) I got my answer. And unsurprisingly I'm a young bass right now.😂 Maybe a tiny bit lower. So thank you, this was really informative. However, by the way, just a quick correction: the last clip was C2-F1 - so C1 is the double low C and F0 would be off the keyboard of the piano (however there actually IS a clip of Mikhail Zlatopolsky audibly singing a double low C with such power that you can clearly hear it even though if I'm not mistaken there must have been at least 10 people singing higher notes along with him, so these things combined are like... barely humanly possible). But he did it. Because oktavists...
So the last bass FACH is that car next to you at the stop light with maximum bass. You can't really hear the music, but you can feel the vibration of that bass knob turned all the way up.
And for heldenbaritone the best example is Wotan from Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" or the Hollander from "Fliegende Hollander". Jago and Macbeth are more for dramatic baritone, bat those roles still are Verdi baritone roles. And heldenbaritone is not really baritone, it's huge, ringing bass-baritone. And in many classifications bass-baritone is classified as highest bass voice type.
Some strange terms and misinformation here. There should be a little more tenor categories and much less baritone and bass. "Cantabile baritone" is not a widely used phrase. In fact this is the first time I've heard it and if you google it very little comes up regarding singers. "Kavalier baritone" on the other hand is commonly used. "Leggiero baritone" should probably be baritone Martin. Not many parts for Verdi baritones? what? And then the example is Puccini?? And then heldenbaritone examples are mostly Verdi?? With lyric baritone Hvorostovski singing? And why then have Dramatic baritone as seperate from both Verdi and Helden? Makes no sense.
Interesting to think about the history of the fach system itself- starting during the late 19th C. Post war “purist” singers often advocated to abandon the system.
As regards MONOSTATOS in DIE ZAUBERFLOTE I was once in a production where this character was easily sung by a baritone which shows that the so called FACH system is sometimes a rather narrow one indeed. I wonder how Mozart really considered the character vocally.
Many of the small low-lying Charaktertenor roles can technically be sung by baritones, some even by basses. Having tenors sing these roles makes them sound less serious, as most of these roles are rather ridiculous characters. But depending on what the producer is going for, you sometimes see e.g. monostatos,yamadori,Altoum played by baritones.
Nice Video, I would just add a little detail, maybe other poeple did this comment, but it sounds weird to me to hear about fach without talking about passagio. I know that the range is important but to classify with the passaggio is so much healthier for a male voice. I saw many poeple finding his good repertoire too late... because they consider the range and the colour instead of the passaggio...And the Fach can be a person as in Germany there are institutions that deliver contracts based on the Fach of the singer. That's not a great thing but it exists
Gulielmo, Papageno, Belcore are lyric baritones?! Those roles are more for bass-baritone. All Mozart's low male voice roles (exept of low bass roles like Sarastro and Osmin) are written for bass-baritone. And many of belcanto baritone roles is pretty low. And Onegin is typically lyric baritone role. Russians often call lyric baritone onegish (Onegine-like). And Escamillo is 100% bass-baritone role (that voice called "barytone basse" in French and that type of voice appears often in French opera).
Somehow the countertenor voice is better suited for the modern opera roles since the 1950s with Britten and thereafter, than the Baroque ones because though they have developed A LOT to fit a match for the castrato roles of then, their voices are kinda more naturally fitted for female singers in pants-roles, and the countertenors kinda got a mixed-reaction on between how they look and how they sing on those parts, whereas the modern opera ones were already written on for themselves since EVER the very beginning of the roles on themselves, henceforth Akenathen is very uniquely done by a countertenor, wheras Orpheus and Giulio Cesare kinda have some ambiguity when actually the female singers might be doing kinda a more "realistic" stronger tune-performance on their voice singing and acting qualities than the countertenor voice for the same roles. (Oddily a female mezzo or contralto does a more "masculine" role than countertenors on that, it´s odd and contradictory but it kinda does happens, and well, henceforth why a total substitution on them instead of pants roles might not ever happen in all)
Hello I don't know anything about singing I wanted to ask, is the highest and lowest note measured on what's comfortable to sing or also the outlier notes on can struggle with sometimes? And can a woman have a B2 lowest (bit strained)?
Scarpia is example of Verdi baritone role? The role from Puccini, and biggest requirement for that role is huge voice (off course mostly that will be lower voice, many of famous Scarpias of past were bass-baritones).
I opened this video just because I wanted to try to find a better description for my voice type (I knew I was a baritone, and that I prefer singing higher in my range, but I wanted to find a better way to classify that - I would say I'm a lyric baritone [untrained though, I just like singing and writing music a lot]), but it was really interesting to learn about all of the types, not just my own. I was expecting to find everything interesting already, just because that's how my brain works, but I wanted to mention that it was just as interesting to learn about as I expected :)
I dislike the generalisation if it comes to range of each of the voice types. Giving my example - my range should be from F3 to A5 but it isn't that black and white. I can sing up to C#6 without sounding like a squeezed cat on a good day AND as low as F2 if I take into consideration my chest voice which I rarely use (only in choir setup if there are not enough tenors lmao). But yeah, my point is - the range really varies based on individuals. Other than that, it is a good quality video. Good job.
Its the range of the characters/fach not the individuals. You also need to think about operatic range as being useful in a acoustic setting with an orchestra. Almost anyone claiming i have this and that range always falls apart when you actually hear them singing in these various ranges, with some exceptions. And you are not likely to be that exception.
I mean all bets are off for countertenors, because that isn't a legitimate operatic voice in the first place, but you're right in general. In opera, a USEABLE two-octave range is actually a lot. Plenty of singers had noticeably less.@@susandrakenviller3683
I found that quite interesting, Opera not my thing, but do appreciate the skill and ability. I tend to think of singers by role too, from Tom Jones to David Coverdale or Dio etc.
Wtf is that Magic Flute production as a videogame arcade where Pamina is the classical Princess Peach and Monostatos is Wario?!! Odd switch change of the voice, because usually Mario and Luigi got the higher and lightier male voices in the games and Wario has a deep to middle dark tune voice, not as deep as Bowser himself (he usually going for deep bass-like) but rather very bass-barytone type. (Seems much what Mozart choose for Don Basilio voice on Le Nozze as a light high tenor type, whereas Rossini chooses for him a quite heavy menacing yet agile deep bass voice).
Two questions. 1. Curious why you go to Puccini for an example of a Verdi baritone? Why not Germont, Rigoletto, Filippo II or Rodrigo, Amonasro, etc. You could pick almost any Verdi opera and find a Verdi baritone, that's why they are called "Verdi baritone" but you went with... Puccini? 2. Where would you place a character like Baron Ochs? Or Falstaff? Buffo basso profondo?
I dont think this video is especially accurate; there are missing types eg - the basso profundo - Osmin & there are too many overlapping alleged Fächer making the whole analysis unnecessarily complex.
Is “Mime” from the ring cycle a character tenor? For that matter, is Herod from Salome? Or did Gerhard Stolze getting really *nasty* singing influence everyone after? I did once hear a Mime from the very early 1900s where the singer sung it straight, but everyone else (Heinz Zednik etc) leans heavily into the nasality.
Mime is indeed a character tenor, though on the heavy side as he still has to be audible over a way louder orchestra than most character tenor roles. How "seriously" the role is sung depends mostly on the production, most indeed go for a sneering nasal style for most of the role.
You are glaringly missing the Italian Tenore Di Grazia/ leggero tenor and Tenore Robusto. There is a lot of missing information and wrong examples here. You use Domingo to show what a supposedly high and very bright sounding tenor voice is supposed to sound like, Domingo always stuggled with high notes and he did not have squillo (bright sound). If you use a bad examples, that is counter to the characteristics you list, people will point it out. It is not true that these are just roles, there are characteristics and voice types that can be identified. If you are a tenor, you cannot suddenly decide that you will play the role of a bass. If you have a lyrical voice and you try to play in too many dramatic parts, you can damage your voice. There is obviously a connection between voice types and the roles you play, you cannot completely separate the two. There are two major tenor categories missing here. It is debatable if it is only two. Like sopranos, there are the most categories in the tenor fach. You can add, Leggero tenors, singing in I Puritani, Light Lyric tenors and Full Lyric tenors in La Boheme or Werther. You get Lyric Spintos like Richard Tucker Lauri Volpi, Mario Filippeshi and Franco Bonisolli in roles like Manrico in Il Travatore, Aida or Turandot high tessitura roles. Depending on what you want to call the fach, Dramatic Spinto, Lyrical Dramatic Tenor, Heroic Tenor or German fach Jugendlicher Heldentenor. There used to be quite a few tenors in this type of category, Marli, Francesco Tamagno and Franco Corelli. I guess you could add the great Caruso to this fach as well. In roles like Pollione in Norma, Raoul in Les Huguenots, Cavalleria Rusticana, Andrea Chenier, Aida, Paggliacci ext. ext. Or you would have to group all of these singers in the Italian Dramatic fach, with others such as Mario Del Monaco and Giuseppe Giacomini, and include roles such as Otello, La Forza Del Destino, La Fanciulla Del West, Pagliacci, Manon Lescaut, Samson et Dalila. You are skipping over a lot of popular tenor roles here. Isn't a Leggero Baritone actually a Bariton-Martin, there is no such thing as a Leggero Baritone. I stopped watching after the Heldontenor. (Not all heldentenors have big voices, as the example you showed, was clearly not a big voice). There are many dramatic tenors with bigger voices. You obviously did a lot of hard work, the video looks good, and you did very well, but the information is just incomplete and incorrect.
I am sorry ,but the score of Una furtiva lagrima is LOWER here than it is , 1 and a 1/2 note lower... There it goes up to A flat... (Not F) It is a nice video, I will subscribe...
As spinto tenor Corelli is unsurpadsed. But you chose Domimgo who, for no reason called that epotaĝe Netrebko " another Callas "!!!??? However, he must have been either bribed in some way or another, or he is out of his mind@
Character tenor is not highest. Mime is character tenor either. And Monostatos is not written for heigh tenor, sometimes that role sing even baritones.
Unpopular opinion: I personally prefer seeing a dude as Cherubino, even though I've seen the FIGARO three times live and the role has always been played by ladies. Seeing clips of countertenors as Cherubino just seems right. I think it's because of the shift toward demanding more *acting* prowess from opera singers, it logically follows (for me at least) that a male would be more realistic, because the character is male. But again, that's an unpopular opinion.
I notice you do not recognise the Bassbaritone class/category as distinct from the Baritone class though you describe the voice [fach?]. Perhaps there is still something not quite solid about the pedagogic recognition of this class name but the same is to be said about several other sub-classifications which you use. I'm old enough to remember how voices were commonly classified by the early 1960's and this voice class designation was perfectly familiar to me then. It was regularly used by a lady whom I knew well who had studied at the Royal College of Music, London, before WW2. It has continued to be familiar to me from e.g. the printed programmes of the Australian Opera and other sources. I do not think it can be done without today unless we are prepared to return to the old Tenor-Head Tenor-High Tenor scheme which went out about 1800.
Ok, wait, for Cantabile Baritone you chose Samuel Ramey (Bass) singing a Bass-Baritone aria; for Verdi Baritone you chose Bryn Terfel (Bass-Baritone) singing Puccini, and for Helden Baritone you chose Hvorostovsky (lyric-baritone) singing a Dramatic Baritone aria by Verdi. 🤦🏻♂️
I'll argue Escamillo is not Cantabile baritone role, simply because no higher baritone can be heard over the orchestration. The range is far too low. Escamillo is lower even than most Verdi baritone parts. It's truly a Dramatic baritone or Basso Cantante part. Also please don't use Hvorostovsky as an example of Helden Baritone when he was a Lyric at best. He can't be heard in the house above anything bigger than a Verdi orchestra.
Exactly Escamillo is definitely not Cantabile baritone, maybe he has to be good looking but range is much lower. The example should have been Dmitri Hvorostovsky with Onegin.
Just another production of Zauberflöte. If you don't like it, there are hundreds of other productions here on TH-cam alone, with the majority of them being rather traditional (some done well and some boring and uninspired). I agree with the maker of the video, Mozart would have loved this if he was alive today. Die Zauberflöte is also a Singspiel (different from opera), so this really is the last thing worth to be upset about it being a modern/funny production.
You don't seem to take criticism very well. The idea that roles are fachs is interesting, but gives little credit to the singer - I can see why many would disagree with such a bold statement. I edit: Verdian baritones not so popular?? (We definitely live in parallel worlds!) - a Verdian role for the fach would have been nice too 😂 And more edit: you're a rebel, that's why Colline uses a microphone😢 I had great fun, thank you
Not gonna watch this. 14 is WAY too many. 3 or four kinds of tenor, baritone, bass, castrato. The end. Might as well say it's infinite because every singer is unique.
Among the many dire (or just plain incorrect) statements in this video, the four that jump out for me personally are: 1. the lack of differentiation between Helden tenor and Dramatic Tenor (in the Italian tradition). 2. Cantabile Baritone should be replaced by the definition and examples of the Kavalier baritone... cantabile baritone is not really a thing. 3. I know you make a point about singers not being fachs, but if you are saying Escamillo is a 'cantabile' baritone, why use the example of one of the greatest of all bass/bass-baritone singers to demonstrate it? and then 4. The ENTIRE Verdi baritone explanation. This showed an unbelievable lack of understanding. Just looking at the fach's namesake, Verdi... there are a large number of roles, not to mention roles from his contemporaries... and then you use a Puccini example... which is not even a Verdi baritone role... it's lower set, and requires much more carry in the middle of the voice, as opposed to roles like Rigoletto, Di Luna (Il Trovatore), Renato (Un Ballo in Maschera), Ford (Falstaff), Rodrigo (Don Carlo) etc etc which have a higher tessitura and still require great power, richness of timbre, elegance, emotion, and nobility... any of these... or many others would have been a much better example of the fach.
Using a bass singing a bass-baritone role as an example for a cantabile/kavalier baritone is a bit unfortunate. Don giovanni or Dr. Malatesta would've been more fitting.
what?? There's no such thing as voice quality or 'niceness' not mattering in opera, comedy or not comedy. That's for any other kind of singing, but not opera.
Using a bass singing a bass-baritone role as an example for a cantabile/kavalier baritone is a bit unfortunate. Don giovanni or Dr. Malatesta would've been more fitting.
The "young deep-voiced male tired of everyone being surprised every time they open their mouth" was definitely me. One of the reasons I got into opera was....there was nothing else for me to sing (like....seriously. How many deep voiced males are there really in popular music? People's idea of a "deep male voice" today is like Josh Groban who isn't even a baritone).
Check out someone like Geoff Castellucci.
Maybe Rammstein? That's metal though.
But yeah I get it. I am mostly a musical theatre nerd. I could hardly think of any male character with bass range. Maybe some of Sondheim's shows. Sweeney Todd is usually played by a bass baritone, such as Bryn Terfel. But even that requires a G4 flat, which might be a little bit high for bass? Maybe you could try Emile De Becque in South Pacific. The highest note is E4 I think?
Why are bass voices not valued?
That's indeed why I also got into classical music. There's a more diverse variety of singers in classical music than in pop music I believe. Also, there are plenty of deeper voices in non-classical music, plenty of them with even deeper voices than Josh Groban, just not specifically within the genre of pop music in most cases.
Even for that they hire opera singers.@@ey8767
I dozed off on the couch and woke up to this video. I know absolutely nothing about opera, and I found it quite entertaining.
Magnificent vídeo!. Thank you so much for sharing the knowledge!
I know many young basses. They hate being uncommon and pushed to sound less bass-like because basses aren’t common in their age. I don’t see why one should push a young singer to sound younger than they sound naturally. A classical singer should always sound DARK and LOUD
Also, a singer who can sing lyric baritone and cavaliere baritone is most likely not able to sing Verdibaritone and vice versa. I know a young bass-baritone, who will most likely also sing some full-dramatic baritone-repertoire in the future, but never Papageno or Figaro.
@@mathildehb0076 And that's okay because we're all different :)
There's really only one kind of baritone. All the old ones sang everything north of Wotan, and the Italians that did sing Wotan still sang in La favorite.@@mathildehb0076
many young basses seems contradictory
@@JackInABeanstalk98 «How is “many young basses” more contradictory than “many young tenors”?! They aren’t as common and many of them start off as baritones.
“Young” as in their 20s. They often mature faster than tenors do. Also well trained young baritones struggle less with the high G than tenors do with the high C. But tenors still need the C more often than the baritones and basses need the G. This often leads to teachers misvoicing their students at a relatively young age and giving them harmful repertoire. “You are probably just a wagnerian tenor”. This has happened too often, and they get short careers, and lose their voice in the end.
This is why young singers should study more art song than opera and gradually learn more operatic repertoire when they are in their mid 20s.
I love all your examples, great selections. And the effort to put the score up!! I know how much time it will need to take! Thank you!
Thank you! Enjoyable and competent presentation.
***OMG, phenomenal VIDEO! Thank yo so much for this stunning survey, very thoughtfully done! I love your associations and metaphors that explain each FACH! I also have a similar style in my own teaching of languages. Keep it up soul sister!! :) ***
i think that in the tenor is missing the light tenor (even if you said Almaviva). For me Florez is a light tenor while pavarotti is a lyric (or lirico leggero but not light)
Leggiero is Italian for light. And again she is talking about faces here, but singers.
Very useful, thank you!
Love this video. This should be required listening for all singers!
Very interesting! Greatly done!
With the female fachs video - the best here on TH-cam! Love it, thank you very much and looking forward to another videos ❤
I remember you from a masterclass with Gerard finley you were amazing so excited to see you again. I would have made a distinctiom between dramatic and helden tenor. In terms of roles, They are not the same because the dramatic tenor is Italianate and typically a higher tesstitura, (Othello and la traviata - alfredo have the same tessit) and massive high notes. Heldentenor have huge voice but spend a majority of singing in a baritone range. Their middle voices are required to be larger than the dramatic tenor. And I'm not talking about singers but rather the roles.
Very informative and helpful. Thanks.
This video is fantastic in it's explanation of fachs! As a baritone I did notice a couple issues in that section though. First I just noticed that your example for the cantabile/kavalier baritone was Samuel Ramey, who is a bass. I know you want to make it clear that fachs are roles, but his voice might not give the right impression of that fach, especially considering he did not and could not sing any of the other roles you listed for that fach.
Agreed, roles like Marcello, Don Giovanni, Dr. Malatesta or Sharpless are far better examples for a Kavalier baritone than Escamillo (who is honestly something in between bass-baritone and kavalierbariton).
I was literally about to comment the same thing but luckily I saw your comment otherwise there would be a duplicate opinion
I agree with you that Samuel Ramey wouldn't be the best case to educate people on the Kavalier baritone fach.
Yes this was a tragic mistake…😢
Fantastic video! Well edited too 👌👌
I love learning new things about voice. Thanks!
both your female FACH and this are wonderful; a needed education. thank you.
Wow, really interesting! Thank you! :-)
I was raised in the Greek Orthodox church, but I actually also had the privvilege to hear, see, and feel a few Oktavists and Bassos Profondos singing hymns deeply, loudly, and resonantly just a few meters, maybe centimiters from me, right to my face
The biggest missed examples in this video would be Ettore Bastianini as the standard for Verdi Baritones, and Franco Corelli for Spinto Tenors. Both of them have such a big cutting voice they pretty much set the standard for their roles.
Bastianini is a good example. His Verdi repertoire is superb. Bryan Terfel is a bass baritone. Franco Corelli is more like a dramatic tenor, so is Lauri Volpi. They are usually classified as spinto but I usually put them on the dramatic side. Spinto is a type of lyric tenor. Singers like Corelli sounds a little bit too much in some lyric repertoires. Placido Domingo is just a textbook spinto when he’s younger.
I am such a big fan of spinto tenors and heldentenors because their heroic high notes are exciting. Same goes for dramatic tenors too. I also find the lyric tenors to be adorable by the way they sound when they sing amazing phrases especially in the Donizetti aria Florez sang. However Florez was considered a leggero tenor than a lyric tenor even though he is my favorite singer.
Indeed I agree that the heavier tenor voices are amazing. But yes Florez is usually considered a leggero tenor.
They each have their own quality though. Look around TH-cam - there is a Pavarotti making an absolute meal of "O mon ame" (the aria Florez slays) while Florez cannot drown out the backing in the climax of "Nessun dorma" (Pavarotti's renowned party piece). Its about the type of voice the song is written for - ie the fach.
It was ironic and funny that for the verdian baritone you chose a puccinian role, Barone Scarpia 😅
Thank you very much for the video! I came here to figure out exactly what kind of bass I would be now and (I'm 18, so this can change of course but) I got my answer. And unsurprisingly I'm a young bass right now.😂 Maybe a tiny bit lower. So thank you, this was really informative.
However, by the way, just a quick correction: the last clip was C2-F1 - so C1 is the double low C and F0 would be off the keyboard of the piano (however there actually IS a clip of Mikhail Zlatopolsky audibly singing a double low C with such power that you can clearly hear it even though if I'm not mistaken there must have been at least 10 people singing higher notes along with him, so these things combined are like... barely humanly possible). But he did it. Because oktavists...
Thank you... Was about to correct the "C1-F0" mistake but lo and behold (no puns teehee) someone else got it taken care of.
Girl i learned so much and you are funny af.
So the last bass FACH is that car next to you at the stop light with maximum bass. You can't really hear the music, but you can feel the vibration of that bass knob turned all the way up.
Just a quick correction the last note is around F1 I think, not F0.
Yep. As a bass who can't quite hit a C2 except early mornings, I know the sound of a C2 very well from trying
And for heldenbaritone the best example is Wotan from Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" or the Hollander from "Fliegende Hollander". Jago and Macbeth are more for dramatic baritone, bat those roles still are Verdi baritone roles. And heldenbaritone is not really baritone, it's huge, ringing bass-baritone. And in many classifications bass-baritone is classified as highest bass voice type.
The counter tenor was glorious!
Hello! Loving the video! I wanted t ask, would you make like "an extension" talking about Tenore di grazia/ tenore leggerio?
Some strange terms and misinformation here. There should be a little more tenor categories and much less baritone and bass. "Cantabile baritone" is not a widely used phrase. In fact this is the first time I've heard it and if you google it very little comes up regarding singers. "Kavalier baritone" on the other hand is commonly used. "Leggiero baritone" should probably be baritone Martin. Not many parts for Verdi baritones? what? And then the example is Puccini?? And then heldenbaritone examples are mostly Verdi?? With lyric baritone Hvorostovski singing? And why then have Dramatic baritone as seperate from both Verdi and Helden? Makes no sense.
Interesting to think about the history of the fach system itself- starting during the late 19th C. Post war “purist” singers often advocated to abandon the system.
As regards MONOSTATOS in DIE ZAUBERFLOTE I was once in a production where this character was easily sung by a baritone which shows that the so called FACH system is sometimes a rather narrow one indeed. I wonder how Mozart really considered the character vocally.
Many of the small low-lying Charaktertenor roles can technically be sung by baritones, some even by basses. Having tenors sing these roles makes them sound less serious, as most of these roles are rather ridiculous characters.
But depending on what the producer is going for, you sometimes see e.g. monostatos,yamadori,Altoum played by baritones.
10:39 btw you used the wrong score, Ramey (who is not a a cantabile baritone) is singing in f, not g.
You're right; Samuel Ramey was a real bass (and to be more complete, a basso coloratura).
Nice Video, I would just add a little detail, maybe other poeple did this comment, but it sounds weird to me to hear about fach without talking about passagio. I know that the range is important but to classify with the passaggio is so much healthier for a male voice. I saw many poeple finding his good repertoire too late... because they consider the range and the colour instead of the passaggio...And the Fach can be a person as in Germany there are institutions that deliver contracts based on the Fach of the singer. That's not a great thing but it exists
Escamillo is too low for a lyric baritone.
Escamillo is best suited for a bass baritone imo
Agreed. Ramey is a high bass, not a baritone. I would go with something like Onegin for cantabile baritone
@@homagetogreathistoricalsin9711 yep. All her other examples (Don Giovanni, Onegin, Marcello) where great but Escamillo is way out of place
@@falkfink true. Ramey singing Olin Blitch was more accurate as far as the category.
Nice video, but I had wished you had chosen an actual low bass opera excerpt rather than a choir piece where the low bass is barely audible
Gulielmo, Papageno, Belcore are lyric baritones?! Those roles are more for bass-baritone. All Mozart's low male voice roles (exept of low bass roles like Sarastro and Osmin) are written for bass-baritone. And many of belcanto baritone roles is pretty low. And Onegin is typically lyric baritone role. Russians often call lyric baritone onegish (Onegine-like).
And Escamillo is 100% bass-baritone role (that voice called "barytone basse" in French and that type of voice appears often in French opera).
There is a young basso profundo on Tik-tok who has very strong low notes in the choir he sings in.
Somehow the countertenor voice is better suited for the modern opera roles since the 1950s with Britten and thereafter, than the Baroque ones because though they have developed A LOT to fit a match for the castrato roles of then, their voices are kinda more naturally fitted for female singers in pants-roles, and the countertenors kinda got a mixed-reaction on between how they look and how they sing on those parts, whereas the modern opera ones were already written on for themselves since EVER the very beginning of the roles on themselves, henceforth Akenathen is very uniquely done by a countertenor, wheras Orpheus and Giulio Cesare kinda have some ambiguity when actually the female singers might be doing kinda a more "realistic" stronger tune-performance on their voice singing and acting qualities than the countertenor voice for the same roles. (Oddily a female mezzo or contralto does a more "masculine" role than countertenors on that, it´s odd and contradictory but it kinda does happens, and well, henceforth why a total substitution on them instead of pants roles might not ever happen in all)
OMG, that low note, didn't know it was possible.
IF you want to hear someone hit low notes better check out Geoff Castellucci. He's basically the main reason I'm a bass.
Hello
I don't know anything about singing
I wanted to ask, is the highest and lowest note measured on what's comfortable to sing or also the outlier notes on can struggle with sometimes?
And can a woman have a B2 lowest (bit strained)?
Scarpia is example of Verdi baritone role? The role from Puccini, and biggest requirement for that role is huge voice (off course mostly that will be lower voice, many of famous Scarpias of past were bass-baritones).
I opened this video just because I wanted to try to find a better description for my voice type (I knew I was a baritone, and that I prefer singing higher in my range, but I wanted to find a better way to classify that - I would say I'm a lyric baritone [untrained though, I just like singing and writing music a lot]), but it was really interesting to learn about all of the types, not just my own. I was expecting to find everything interesting already, just because that's how my brain works, but I wanted to mention that it was just as interesting to learn about as I expected :)
I dislike the generalisation if it comes to range of each of the voice types. Giving my example - my range should be from F3 to A5 but it isn't that black and white. I can sing up to C#6 without sounding like a squeezed cat on a good day AND as low as F2 if I take into consideration my chest voice which I rarely use (only in choir setup if there are not enough tenors lmao). But yeah, my point is - the range really varies based on individuals. Other than that, it is a good quality video. Good job.
Its the range of the characters/fach not the individuals. You also need to think about operatic range as being useful in a acoustic setting with an orchestra. Almost anyone claiming i have this and that range always falls apart when you actually hear them singing in these various ranges, with some exceptions. And you are not likely to be that exception.
I mean all bets are off for countertenors, because that isn't a legitimate operatic voice in the first place, but you're right in general. In opera, a USEABLE two-octave range is actually a lot. Plenty of singers had noticeably less.@@susandrakenviller3683
I found that quite interesting, Opera not my thing, but do appreciate the skill and ability. I tend to think of singers by role too, from Tom Jones to David Coverdale or Dio etc.
Wtf is that Magic Flute production as a videogame arcade where Pamina is the classical Princess Peach and Monostatos is Wario?!! Odd switch change of the voice, because usually Mario and Luigi got the higher and lightier male voices in the games and Wario has a deep to middle dark tune voice, not as deep as Bowser himself (he usually going for deep bass-like) but rather very bass-barytone type. (Seems much what Mozart choose for Don Basilio voice on Le Nozze as a light high tenor type, whereas Rossini chooses for him a quite heavy menacing yet agile deep bass voice).
I am 11 years old just starting middle school and my range is G2-G3 I sound like a giant
11:38 Verdi Baritone: shows a Puccini role.
Two questions. 1. Curious why you go to Puccini for an example of a Verdi baritone? Why not Germont, Rigoletto, Filippo II or Rodrigo, Amonasro, etc. You could pick almost any Verdi opera and find a Verdi baritone, that's why they are called "Verdi baritone" but you went with... Puccini?
2. Where would you place a character like Baron Ochs? Or Falstaff? Buffo basso profondo?
I honestly thought for the last one, you were going to play the bass duet from Mephistoles.
What about the sopranistas? Also, there have been some bass women, do they mention that on the other vocals vids?
Huh. I thought dramatic tenors and spinto tenors were different voice type. Domingo would be dramatic; Jonas Kaufman spinto.
I dont think this video is especially accurate; there are missing types eg - the basso profundo - Osmin & there are too many overlapping alleged Fächer making the whole analysis unnecessarily complex.
Is “Mime” from the ring cycle a character tenor? For that matter, is Herod from Salome? Or did Gerhard Stolze getting really *nasty* singing influence everyone after? I did once hear a Mime from the very early 1900s where the singer sung it straight, but everyone else (Heinz Zednik etc) leans heavily into the nasality.
Mime is indeed a character tenor, though on the heavy side as he still has to be audible over a way louder orchestra than most character tenor roles.
How "seriously" the role is sung depends mostly on the production, most indeed go for a sneering nasal style for most of the role.
You are glaringly missing the Italian Tenore Di Grazia/ leggero tenor and Tenore Robusto. There is a lot of missing information and wrong examples here. You use Domingo to show what a supposedly high and very bright sounding tenor voice is supposed to sound like, Domingo always stuggled with high notes and he did not have squillo (bright sound). If you use a bad examples, that is counter to the characteristics you list, people will point it out. It is not true that these are just roles, there are characteristics and voice types that can be identified. If you are a tenor, you cannot suddenly decide that you will play the role of a bass. If you have a lyrical voice and you try to play in too many dramatic parts, you can damage your voice. There is obviously a connection between voice types and the roles you play, you cannot completely separate the two. There are two major tenor categories missing here. It is debatable if it is only two. Like sopranos, there are the most categories in the tenor fach. You can add, Leggero tenors, singing in I Puritani, Light Lyric tenors and Full Lyric tenors in La Boheme or Werther. You get Lyric Spintos like Richard Tucker Lauri Volpi, Mario Filippeshi and Franco Bonisolli in roles like Manrico in Il Travatore, Aida or Turandot high tessitura roles.
Depending on what you want to call the fach, Dramatic Spinto, Lyrical Dramatic Tenor, Heroic Tenor or German fach Jugendlicher Heldentenor. There used to be quite a few tenors in this type of category, Marli, Francesco Tamagno and Franco Corelli. I guess you could add the great Caruso to this fach as well. In roles like Pollione in Norma, Raoul in Les Huguenots, Cavalleria Rusticana, Andrea Chenier, Aida, Paggliacci ext. ext.
Or you would have to group all of these singers in the Italian Dramatic fach, with others such as Mario Del Monaco and Giuseppe Giacomini, and include roles such as Otello, La Forza Del Destino, La Fanciulla Del West, Pagliacci, Manon Lescaut, Samson et Dalila. You are skipping over a lot of popular tenor roles here. Isn't a Leggero Baritone actually a Bariton-Martin, there is no such thing as a Leggero Baritone.
I stopped watching after the Heldontenor. (Not all heldentenors have big voices, as the example you showed, was clearly not a big voice). There are many dramatic tenors with bigger voices. You obviously did a lot of hard work, the video looks good, and you did very well, but the information is just incomplete and incorrect.
wait a minute
you put leggero in the wrong category
leggero is for the hightest tenor voices, even higher than light lyric voices.
I am sorry ,but the score of Una furtiva lagrima is LOWER here than it is , 1 and a 1/2 note lower... There it goes up to A flat... (Not F) It is a nice video, I will subscribe...
Zlatopolsky’s lowest note was a C1, not an F0
If you think Domingo's a spinto tenor, then it's idiocy. Perhaps the best choice is Corelli in the spinto.
As spinto tenor Corelli is unsurpadsed. But you chose Domimgo who, for no reason called that epotaĝe Netrebko " another Callas "!!!??? However, he must have been either bribed in some way or another, or he is out of his mind@
My vocal range is F#2-F#4. Am I a dramatic baritone or what? I'm currently 18.7 years old.
Probably a lyric. Hard to determine without a sample.
@@deathrattle216 thanks for your answer.
Handel rarely, very rarely used counter-tenors. He wrote his masterpieces for castratri.
As always no examples of their speaking voices, and high bass differences from low baritones not so clear. Other than that quite informative video.
Character tenor is not highest. Mime is character tenor either. And Monostatos is not written for heigh tenor, sometimes that role sing even baritones.
Unpopular opinion: I personally prefer seeing a dude as Cherubino, even though I've seen the FIGARO three times live and the role has always been played by ladies. Seeing clips of countertenors as Cherubino just seems right. I think it's because of the shift toward demanding more *acting* prowess from opera singers, it logically follows (for me at least) that a male would be more realistic, because the character is male. But again, that's an unpopular opinion.
I notice you do not recognise the Bassbaritone class/category as distinct from the Baritone class though you describe the voice [fach?]. Perhaps there is still something not quite solid about the pedagogic recognition of this class name but the same is to be said about several other sub-classifications which you use.
I'm old enough to remember how voices were commonly classified by the early 1960's and this voice class designation was perfectly familiar to me then. It was regularly used by a lady whom I knew well who had studied at the Royal College of Music, London, before WW2. It has continued to be familiar to me from e.g. the printed programmes of the Australian Opera and other sources. I do not think it can be done without today unless we are prepared to return to the old Tenor-Head Tenor-High Tenor scheme which went out about 1800.
OK, for male voices: Deep Bass- Lyric Bass- Tenor- Head Tenor- High Tenor- Alto.
God my voice type really isn’t popular
Ok, wait, for Cantabile Baritone you chose Samuel Ramey (Bass) singing a Bass-Baritone aria; for Verdi Baritone you chose Bryn Terfel (Bass-Baritone) singing Puccini, and for Helden Baritone you chose Hvorostovsky (lyric-baritone) singing a Dramatic Baritone aria by Verdi. 🤦🏻♂️
I'll argue Escamillo is not Cantabile baritone role, simply because no higher baritone can be heard over the orchestration. The range is far too low. Escamillo is lower even than most Verdi baritone parts. It's truly a Dramatic baritone or Basso Cantante part. Also please don't use Hvorostovsky as an example of Helden Baritone when he was a Lyric at best. He can't be heard in the house above anything bigger than a Verdi orchestra.
Exactly Escamillo is definitely not Cantabile baritone, maybe he has to be good looking but range is much lower. The example should have been Dmitri Hvorostovsky with Onegin.
I don’t favor any fach. I enjoy them all.
Samuel Ramey is actually a bass. But Toreador is a good example!
My god what is that mario Zauberflote in 4:30...
Yep that’s right lol
Just another production of Zauberflöte. If you don't like it, there are hundreds of other productions here on TH-cam alone, with the majority of them being rather traditional (some done well and some boring and uninspired).
I agree with the maker of the video, Mozart would have loved this if he was alive today. Die Zauberflöte is also a Singspiel (different from opera), so this really is the last thing worth to be upset about it being a modern/funny production.
You don't seem to take criticism very well. The idea that roles are fachs is interesting, but gives little credit to the singer - I can see why many would disagree with such a bold statement.
I edit: Verdian baritones not so popular?? (We definitely live in parallel worlds!) - a Verdian role for the fach would have been nice too 😂
And more edit: you're a rebel, that's why Colline uses a microphone😢
I had great fun, thank you
Some of these singers don't have the power for opera singing at all, they sound like they're faking it. Anybody can do that.
Not gonna watch this. 14 is WAY too many. 3 or four kinds of tenor, baritone, bass, castrato. The end. Might as well say it's infinite because every singer is unique.
Because Juan Diego Florez would fit so well singing Wagnerian repertoire. The subtypes exist for good reason.
Among the many dire (or just plain incorrect) statements in this video, the four that jump out for me personally are: 1. the lack of differentiation between Helden tenor and Dramatic Tenor (in the Italian tradition). 2. Cantabile Baritone should be replaced by the definition and examples of the Kavalier baritone... cantabile baritone is not really a thing. 3. I know you make a point about singers not being fachs, but if you are saying Escamillo is a 'cantabile' baritone, why use the example of one of the greatest of all bass/bass-baritone singers to demonstrate it? and then 4. The ENTIRE Verdi baritone explanation. This showed an unbelievable lack of understanding. Just looking at the fach's namesake, Verdi... there are a large number of roles, not to mention roles from his contemporaries... and then you use a Puccini example... which is not even a Verdi baritone role... it's lower set, and requires much more carry in the middle of the voice, as opposed to roles like Rigoletto, Di Luna (Il Trovatore), Renato (Un Ballo in Maschera), Ford (Falstaff), Rodrigo (Don Carlo) etc etc which have a higher tessitura and still require great power, richness of timbre, elegance, emotion, and nobility... any of these... or many others would have been a much better example of the fach.
Forced constriction is not opera singing
Using a bass singing a bass-baritone role as an example for a cantabile/kavalier baritone is a bit unfortunate. Don giovanni or Dr. Malatesta would've been more fitting.
Yeah I agree Samuel Ramey is a basso cantante and Escamillo is a bass-baritone role. Either way it’s not that big of a deal. A mistake is a mistake 🤷
what?? There's no such thing as voice quality or 'niceness' not mattering in opera, comedy or not comedy. That's for any other kind of singing, but not opera.
Using a bass singing a bass-baritone role as an example for a cantabile/kavalier baritone is a bit unfortunate. Don giovanni or Dr. Malatesta would've been more fitting.