By HRJ
Operatic tradition divides voices into two main groups:
- Female voices
- Male voices
And each group has three categories according to their vocal registers (a concept known by the term "tessitura"); that is, how low or high-pitched their sound is.
- Female voices
- Soprano (higher pitch)
- Contralto (lower)
- Mezzo-soprano (intermediate)
- Male voices
- Tenor (higher pitch)* Tenor (higher pitch)*
- Bass (lower)
- Baritone (intermediate)
In turn, within each tessitura there are various subdivisions related to characteristics such as power, agility and resistance or the expressive function of the character within the opera (whether its role is comic or tragic).
SOPRANO
- Soprano coloratura (as the Queen of the night in The Magic Flute by Mozart).
- Dramatic soprano (as Leonora in Fidelio by Beethoven).
- Soprano supradramatica (as Isolde in Tristan and Isolde Wagner's Tristan and Isolde).
- Lyric soprano (as Mimi in La bohéme by Puccini).
MEZZOSOPRANO
- Lyric mezzo-soprano (as Carmen in Bizet's opera of the same name)
- Dramatic mezzo-soprano (as Dalila in Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns)
CONTRALTO
It is a rare tessitura for which few roles have been written in operatic literature compared to other voice types. Sometimes roles originally written for mezzo-sopranos are sung by contraltos and vice versa, such as Olga in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky or Rosina in Cinderella by Rossini.
TENOR
- Tenore di forza (as Othello in Verdi's opera of the same name).
- Dramatic tenor (as Siegfried in the Ring of the Nibelung Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung).
- Lyric tenor (as Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart).
- Tenore spinto (as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto by Verdi).
- Tenor bufo (as Trabuco in The Force of Destiny by Verdi).
- Character tenor (as Herod in Salome by R. Strauss).
- Brilliant tenore (as Renato in A Masked Ball Verdi's A Masked Ball).
BARITONE
- Lyric baritone (as Germont in La traviata by Verdi).
- Character baritone (as Fray Melitón in The Force of Destiny by Verdi).
- Baritone bufo (as Gianni Schicchi in Puccini's opera of the same name).
UNDER
- Deep bass (as Sarastro in The Magic Flute Mozart's The Magic Flute).
- Bass bufo (as Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville by Verdi).
- Serious bass (as Philip II in Don Carlo by Verdi).
- Low in character (as Mephistopheles in Gounod's Faust).
- Light bass (as Kaspar in The Poacher of Weber).
- Singing bass (as Wotan in The Ring of the Nibelung Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung).
The problem of traditional vocal labels
As you can see, opera tradition has labeled each voice type according to its characteristics, which is very practical both for the composer (when writing the vocal parts) and for the theaters (when choosing the right singer for each character).
However, from a contemporary point of view, traditional vocal labels have two major problems:
- When a singer is labeled in a category, it is difficult for her to break out of it. For example, if a soprano develops her career as a coloratura and over time her voice changes and becomes dramatic, it is difficult for theaters to give her leading roles in a vocal category other than the one she was labeled. In this regard, it is important to understand that with age voices change: they tend to widen, and may even change tessitura, as happened to Plácido Domingo, who for most of his career was a tenor, but now sings baritone roles.
- Traditional vocal labels tend to generate associations that only reinforce gender biases and stigmas. For example:
Tenor. hero.
Soprano: beautiful woman in trouble.
Baritone: villain.
Mezzo-soprano: witch.
Bass: wise old man.
Contralto: old woman.
Fluent voice, a contemporary solution
The contemporary approach to operatic voices is to dissolve labels and individualize each one. To understand it as a fluid sound with its own profound characteristics and, above all, in continuous transformation: it can be identified at a certain moment with a certain category (e.g. dramatic soprano) and at the same time have characteristics of another (e.g. lyric mezzo-soprano), but never defined in an immutable and fixed label. This is why contemporary opera writing is usually flexible and aimed at fluid voices.
*Within the male voices there is the subcategory of "countertenor", which is sharper than the tenor, but as it does not have a precise tessitura (since its singing is "head" and not "chest", like the rest of the categories), it is usually considered as a subcategory.
