john,
i detected a bit of frustration in the tone of your print over the
catagorization of us lower voice types. when i studied with richard
cassilly, he was convinced that i was a bass-baritone trying to get away with
singing baritone (who knows why). his argument to me was that, for one, my
low range was far to solid to be a baritone's (and he was singing with weikl
and hagegard at the time, saying that Bb was as low as either of them ever
wanted to sing) but, more importantly, was the location of what he used to
call my 'climax notes'.
in looking at bass arias, there are a few; sarastro's two, fiesco's,
osmin's, etc. that have low Fs or F#s in them, and there are certainly roles
like sarastro, hagen, pogner, etc. that call for a basso profondo, at least
according to the traditions of casting those roles, but most of them don't go
out of the range of A-E. the 'climax notes' are usually D, Eb or E,
sometimes F and very rarely, F# (the Gb in 'boris is the only one i can think
of. i don't count the basilio's F# , as that is usually done a whole step
lower. baritone arias, on the other hand, 'climax' so frequently on F# and
G and occasionally, Ab (although, i don't remember any of those being in the
original score) and not all that often on F.
the idea of using 'climax notes' as an indication of voice type ('climax
notes' being those you can really take the paint off the walls with) is not
one that gets much print. in the book 'divo', weikl discusses the problems
he has with singing don giovanni's 'fin'ch han dal vino'. he said if had
been written a third higher, he would have been much happier. he compared
it to 'largo al factotum', being much happier singing the latter. comparing
the tessitura of most bass arias to most baritone arias, even without the
'climax notes, reveals them to be very different creatures, even if they
cover the same range.
mike
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