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Baritone and bass

Bryn Terfel

"Opera's heavy-man" - JD Steane

Baritone

Bass range Baritones often 'meet in the middle' between dramatic and lyric.

Dramatic

Famous roles: Escamillo (Bizet - Carmen); Falstaff (Verdi - Falstaff); Wolfram (Wagner - Tannhäuser); Iago (Verdi - Otello); Scarpia (Puccini - Tosca).

Famous singers: Renato Bruson; Piero Cappuccilli; Justino Diaz; Tito Gobbi; Tom Krause.

Lyric

Famous roles: Germont père (Verdi - La Traviata); Malatesta (Donizetti - Don Pasquale); Figaro (Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro).

Famous lyric baritones: Thomas Allen; Thomas Hampson; Sherrill Milnes; Bryn Terfel (pictured).

Bass-baritone

Wagnerian

Famous roles: Wotan (Wagner - Der Ring des Nibelungen); Hans Sachs (Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg); Dutchman (Wagner - Der Fliegende Holländer); Amfortas (Wagner - Parsifal).

Non-Wagnerian

Famous roles: Golaud (Debussy - Pelléas et Mélisande); King Fisher (Tippett - The Midsummer Marriage); Don Giovanni (Mozart - Don Giovanni); Balstrode (Britten - Peter Grimes).

Famous singers: Norman Bailey; Hans Hotter; James Morris; Friedrich Schorr; John Tomlinson; Willard White.

Bass

Bass rangeCantante (singing)

Famous roles: Boris (Musorgsky - Boris Godunov); Count Rodolfo (Bellini - La Sonnambula); Philip II (Verdi - Don Carlos).

Famous singers: Boris Christoff; Nicolai Ghiaurov; Robert Lloyd; Ruggiero Raimondi; Samuel Ramey.

Profondo (deep)

Famous roles: Osmin (Mozart - Die Entführung aus dem Serail); Sarastro (Mozart - Die Zauberflöte); Hagen (Wagner - Götterdämmerung); Grand Inquisitor (Verdi - Don Carlos).

Famous singers: Gottlob Frick; Michael Langdon; Matti Salminen; David Ward.


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