The most common male voice was lumped in with basses for centuries
Most men who sing are baritones, sitting between the deep bass and the bright tenor. Yet for hundreds of years opera houses barely recognised the voice as its own category. It took Italy's bel canto revolution in the early 1800s, and Rossini's Figaro, to give baritones their breakthrough.
The name comes from Greek for low sounding. Composers usually write for it across about two octaves, F2 to F4 in choirs and G2 to G4 in opera. The word first surfaced as baritonans in late fifteenth-century French church music, where it could mean the lowest part of all; in seventeenth-century Italy it simply meant the average male chorister.
By the early eighteenth century the voice had its modern range, but scores kept labelling it bass. Many Handel roles marked bass are really low baritone parts, and Mozart wrote the era's most lasting baritone roles, including Papageno in The Magic Flute, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni himself. In the early nineteenth century cast lists still used terms like basse chantante for singers later called baritones.
Bel canto changed that. As it displaced the castrato-dominated operas of the previous century, the baritone emerged as a distinct voice. Basses had traditionally played kings and high priests; the more agile baritone could be a loyal friend or even a romantic lead, though more often it got the villain. Figaro in Rossini's Barber of Seville is often called the first true baritone role. Donizetti and Verdi then pushed the voice upward, favouring its top notes for a more brilliant sound, and singers such as Felice Varesi created Verdi's Rigoletto and Macbeth.
Later in the century Wagner demanded a heavier, more powerful type, the Heldenbariton, today's bass-baritone, and Franz Betz sang Wotan in the first complete Ring at Bayreuth. At the light end, the tenor-like baryton-Martin is named after the French singer Jean-Blaise Martin. The gramophone arrived in time to record stars like Mattia Battistini, nicknamed the King of Baritones.
Source: Baritone
