# What Lighter Baritone Voices Used to Sound Like



## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

A few of you don't take too well to getting hung up on fach (you know who you are  ), but pretty much everyone agrees there are bigger vs lighter soprani, bigger vs lighter basses, etc. This can be observed in an era of recorded operatic singing, but I wanted to draw attention to earlier eras (say, late 1800s to around the mid 1960s) because, during this rather lengthy period, even the lightest of baritones had bigger, darker voices than anyone singing today. Rather than going into too convoluted an explanation, I think these examples will speak for themselves.

Sesto Bruscantini 





Lawrence Tibbett





Herman Prey


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

And a few more. Once again, these represented the _lighter_ end of the baritone voice, yet sang with bigger, deeper voices that _any _prominent baritone on the opera stage today. When you listen to these, notice how you never sit and ask "does this sound more like a baritone or more like a tenor?"

Nelson Eddy 






Joseph Shore 






Sherill Milnes


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

These posts cover a huge amount of ground, from Bruscantini singing a part Mozart wrote for what was termed at the time as a bass, there being no baritone category to a Schubert Lied sung by a baritone in an appropriate key no doubt. (I would call this a light bass role and Bruscantini was mostly famous in comic bass roles.) That's not to say that the premise of the OP is incorrect, I would have to hear a number of different recordings of a true lyric bariton aria (Figaro's aria from Barber or Valentine's from Faust) before being able to agree or disagree.

N.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Hvorostovsky
Presley


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Elvira in the first video looks like Betty Page.


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## kappablanca (9 mo ago)

Do you mean to say that Shore and Tibbett are light baritones? Maybe they’re not Bastianini dark, but they’re not far off. Others are definitely light baritones, but these two don’t seem to be to me.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> Hvorostovsky
> Presley


I don't know who Presley is, but Hvorostovsky is no longer living. During the last half of his career, he was one of the only baritones around who was...actually a baritone.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Shore sings tenor high C's on Youtube


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