So, for a project I'm basing some characters names off the voice types for opera, but I'm having trouble determining what to use. I am not musical, so this has been very confusing for me ! I don't understand the pitch order for Alto and Tenor and Contralto and Countertenor or any of that ... So; my question : What do you think of as the seven most common / well-known operatic voice types ? ( If you could rank by pitch [ Soprano, Mezzo, ... Bass ] that would be super helpful, too ! )
It was my understanding that contralto was just the long version of alto- I sang alto for a number of years and one of the guys that ran the choir called us contralto's- I suspect he liked to sound posh, but it depends whether you're referring to the vocal range or the operatic style. They're interchanged a lot. But basically soprano is the high female, mezzo soprano sings somewhere in the middle and alto is the lower female. Tenor is the higher male, baritone middling range and bass lower male. It's not set in stone. I know a lot of ladies who sing Tenor and men who sing Falsetto to reach the range of a Soprano. Then within each of those there are different types depending on the timbre, which means quality of tone so you can get lyrical and dramatic alto types. Within the soprano voice range you get a few different types: spinto, which is very dramatic, soubrette which is light, bright and youthful and colouratura which are singers that are able to do fancy, twiddly bells and whistles type of stuff. Then within all of that you have light and full lyrical, light being sweet and soft and full being a mature voice that can still be heard over the orchestra. I'm not sure where that will leave you with names, though!
I'm probably skipping over timbre and lyrical stuff since that leaves me with too many and I was only doing seven, though theoretically it could change. I'm basically just using them as surnames, but they'll also have those voice types ( and Soprano will likely be able to sing spinto, soubrette, and colouratura because she's already a magical girl ) .
