“Nothing is Sexier Than a Baritone” —
I’d forgotten that voice…It’s like a hot bubble bath and a velvet pillow and being kissed on the ear, all at once.
. . .It was really a stupid movie, on many levels, not least because of the rampant and pervasive sexism. I remember my mom begging me to change the channel when she heard the opening notes of “Bless Your Beautiful Hide.”
Her argument was:
It was heinous that
a) Howard Keel was roaming the streets looking for a wife simply because she would be a useful farming asset, and
b) He had reduced the act to such a transactional level that he was equating this theoretical woman with livestock.My argument was as follows:
Shut up, Howard Keel is singing.
As the party of the second part, I can attest to this as 100% true. No hyperbole for dramatic bloggy effect.
They wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with this child in school! 😉
Let’s bring back the days when baritones were the touchstones of musicals. Let’s write new music for them so we don’t have to keep revisiting Rodgers and Hammerstein clunkers to get our sexy baritone fix. Rodgers and Hammerstein are not the apex of musical theatre, their shows were depressing and predictable, and, as near as I can tell, a sort of “gateway” musical theatre that sucks in people who don’t know how cool Sondheim is yet.
Cocking A Snook! 
Foolishness! Listen to “Some enchanted evening” sung by (a) Ezio Pinza (original cast) and (b) Giorgio Tozzi (the movie) – both basses. And then tell me again that “nothing is sexier than a baritone”.
(I was talking to a tenor in the interval of a stunning recital by Thomas Hampson – baritone – who told me smugly, “The tenors get the girls!” My reply – “Yes, but the basses satisfy them!”)
Wow! Who knew musical theater was so. . . ummm. . . passionate. 🙂
Nance
I think she loves basses too — her first voice coach was a bass who could and did sing anything — and maybe hasn’t ever distinguished in her own mind between bass and baritone roles? I know I haven’t. I’m pretty sure we both thought of Pinza for example as baritone rather than bass? Her loyalty is to both, as richer and sexier simply for being “not tenors”. . .
😉
[…] Nothing is Sexier Than a Baritone — Fav D unschools with Howard Keel in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and other musical movies […]
[…] In the end, isn’t it always the unschooled and ideally musical power of story learning, about who you are and how to live, that really […]
Philip Quast was brilliant as Emile in South Pacific. His Some enchanted Evening is on youtube. Baritones. Every Time. Manly without being stodgy.