Dear "v--",
At 05:30 PM 12/27/01 -0000, vivaelcanto wrote: >My first teacher told me (this will sound crazy) that I would make a >nice bass or a nice tenor but not a baritone as I didn't have the >character for it. This was, as you can imagine, utterly confusing.
It surely is that!
>My current teacher believes I'm a baritone and my coach, who is very >experienced and works for a major opera house in England, believes >I'm a bass-baritone. My tessitura is between Ab1 to F#3 being my >passagio note around Eb3 or E3 . I feel comfortable singing things >like Mozart's Figaro or Leporello, Escamillo from Carmen, etc. I >feel happy with this because I have a sense of who I am vocally.
It sounds to me like this is where you'll find your answer. A voice teacher once told me that baritones are the most confusing voices. The designation seems to encompass such a very wide range of voices with qualities of both tenor and bass. The speaking voice seems to be only a general, and often unreliable, indicator. Some teachers and speech pathologists use the "uh-huh" method as another indicator; where the "-huh" part, if truly unaffected, can point to the lower middle of a singing voice, and also where general speech level should be.
Other teachers rely on the passagi. I believe an upper passagio point of Eb - E above middle C (ie, Eb4-E4) would indicate a typical baritone, with tenors being F4-G#4 (depending on type). Others on this list will correct me, I trust, if I boggle these points. These are also described in Richard Miller's books. However, I suspect the passagio method can be confusing, too. One of my teachers decided to train me as a baritone, partly because that's what I was singing in church choir when I first came to her. I really wanted to sound, well, "baritonal"; worked hard to darken my voice; to block the overtones that I thought made me "stick out". She found my passagio exit to be about Eb4-E4, like yours. But I was having lots of trouble with notes lower than Bb2, and the steady diet of "low-ish" notes was very tiring for me. My current teacher told me that there was a reason I didn't like low notes; that my voice took on more interesting colors above D4; that I needed to relax and stop trying to "beef up" my voice. A year later, the passagio exit had risen to F#4-G4.
Then someone on this list wrote an interesting post which I found very helpful. She (and I'm sorry I don't remember who it was) said simply, "It just depends on where you like to sing, and feel the most free." In other words, if for whatever reason, you could only sing ONE OCTAVE, what would that octave be? B2-B3 or D3-D4 or G3-G4?? So, that brings us to your defining statement, above. It seems to me that if singing Figaro or Leporello suits your sense of self, QED.
On the other hand, I am not a voice teacher, and the above is just my personal opinion.
GWendel, dT
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