The Bass-Baritone Voice

When an opera composer needs a singer with the low notes of a bass as well as the sustaining power, agility, and range of a baritone, they send for a bass-baritone. It’s as much about color as range: bass-baritones possess a vocal richness that’s neither as black-hued as a deep bass or as brazen as a baritone. If a male operatic character has a lot to say—and they’re something more than just a straightforward villain or clown—chances are they’ll be sung by a bass-baritone. So the witty, no-nonsense hero of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is a bass-baritone role; so too is the heart-throb Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen and Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca (a villain, true, but a villain with brains). Gilbert and Sullivan cast bass-baritones as some of their drollest characters. The supreme bass-baritone roles are the complex, morally conflicted creations of Wagner: the troubled deity Wotan in The Ring, and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger. Demanding huge stamina as well as profound psychological insight, the great bass-baritone roles lack the outward glamour of their tenor or soprano colleagues—but more often than not, they’re both the head and the heart of the opera.