When I was in the Opera Australia chorus, I was a mezzo-soprano — the middle voice between soprano and contralto. People would ask what that meant, and I’d say, “I sing the interesting parts that nobody remembers.” That’s only partly a joke. Mezzos get the witches, the seductresses, the trouser roles, and the mothers. We rarely get the girl, but we always get the best character arc.

Let me walk you through the voice types, because understanding them genuinely changes how you hear opera.

The Women’s Voices

Soprano

The highest female voice and the one most people associate with opera. Sopranos get the heroines, the love interests, and approximately 90% of the famous arias. But “soprano” is a big category, and there are crucial sub-types:

• Coloratura soprano: Light, agile, capable of those astonishing fast runs and high notes. Think the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute. The vocal equivalent of a figure skater.
• Lyric soprano: Warm, sweet, medium-weight. Your Mimis (La Boheme), your Violettas (La Traviata). The bread and butter of the repertoire.
• Spinto soprano: A lyric voice with more punch and dramatic weight. Can cut through a big orchestra. Your Toscas, your Butterflys.
• Dramatic soprano: Big, powerful, built for Wagner and Strauss. Brunnhilde, Isolde, Elektra. These voices fill a 2,000-seat house without a microphone and make your spine tingle.

Mezzo-Soprano

My people. We sit below the sopranos and above the (very rare) true contraltos. Mezzos have a warmer, darker, richer sound. We get Carmen, Rosina in The Barber of Seville (in the mezzo version), Cherubino, Octavian, Hansel, and basically every witch and fortune-teller ever written.

There’s a special category called trouser roles — male characters sung by women. Cherubino (a teenage boy in The Marriage of Figaro), Octavian (a young count in Der Rosenkavalier), and Hansel are all mezzo roles. It’s odd until you hear it, and then it makes perfect sense — a mezzo’s voice captures that adolescent quality beautifully.

Contralto

The lowest female voice, and genuinely rare. A true contralto has a deep, dark, almost otherworldly quality. Roles are limited — Erda in Wagner’s Ring, Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera — but when you hear one, you don’t forget it.

The Men’s Voices

Tenor

The highest standard male voice and, like the soprano, the one that gets the heroes and the famous tunes. Sub-types matter here too:

• Leggero tenor: Light, bright, agile. Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore.
• Lyric tenor: The romantic lead voice. Rodolfo in La Boheme, Alfredo in La Traviata, the Duke in Rigoletto.
• Spinto tenor: More heft. Cavaradossi in Tosca, Don Jose in Carmen, Calaf in Turandot.
• Heldentenor: The dramatic heavyweight. Built for Wagner. Siegfried, Tristan. There are about seven of these in the world at any given time, and they are all booked five years in advance.

Baritone

The middle male voice, and my favourite to listen to (don’t tell the tenors). Baritones get the villains, the fathers, the rivals, and occasionally the heroes. The range sits comfortably in the middle of the male voice, which gives it a warmth and expressiveness that can be extraordinary.

Rigoletto, Figaro in The Barber of Seville (the baritone one, not the mezzo one — opera is confusing), Escamillo in Carmen, Scarpia in Tosca. Some of the most compelling characters in opera are baritone roles.

In Australia, we’ve been spoiled by having Teddy Tahu Rhodes as our resident star baritone for two decades. His Don Giovanni is still the benchmark.

Bass

The lowest male voice. Basses get the kings, the priests, the devils, and the comic old men. It’s an underrated voice type — a great bass can make a room vibrate. Sarastro in The Magic Flute hits a low F that you feel in your chest. Boris Godunov is one of the greatest roles in all of opera, and it’s a bass role.

There’s also the bass-baritone, which sits between the two — slightly higher than a true bass, with more flexibility. This is where you find Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, the Dutchman in The Flying Dutchman, and Wotan in the Ring cycle.

Why It Matters

Understanding voice types transforms your listening. When you know that a dramatic soprano is pushing her voice to its absolute limits in the final scene of Elektra, or that the heldentenor singing Siegfried has been on stage for five hours and still needs to produce thrilling top notes, you appreciate the athletic achievement alongside the artistic one.

Opera singing is the most physically demanding form of vocal production that exists. These are human voices — no microphones, no amplification — filling enormous theatres over full orchestras. It’s genuinely astonishing when you stop to think about it.

For a deeper look at Australian opera singers making waves internationally, the Opera Australia artist pages are a good starting point.

— Margot