The Twenty Most Beautiful Baritone Arias

"Opera," George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "is when a soprano and a tenor want to make love but are prevented from doing so by a baritone." And indeed it’s true: baritones in opera are often the baddies, jealous counts and over-protective brothers set on impeding the course of true love. But, as this playlist reveals, baritones also have a sensitive side, in arias that encompass tenderness, heartbreak and longing, characters that include well-meaning fathers (including the hunchbacked Rigoletto and Wagner’s flawed god, Wotan – normally, strictly speaking, a bass-baritone) as well as dreamers and idealists.