Haute-contre

Lully wrote 8 out of 14 leading male roles for the voice; Charpentier, who was an haute-contre himself, composed extensively for the voice-part, as did Rameau and, later, Gluck.

The leading hautes-contre of the Académie Royale de Musique that created the main roles of Lully's operas, at the end of the seventeenth century, were Bernard Clédière (who started off as a taille, a lower Tenor voice type) and Louis Gaulard Dumesny.

Notable hautes-contre of the eighteenth century's first half included firstly Jacques Cochereau, Louis/Claude Murayre and Denis-François Tribou, who revived Lully style and operas in the twenties and in the thirties,[1] then the mentioned Pierre Jélyotte and his substitutes, François Poirier et Jean-Paul Spesoller de Latour [it], all of whom sang Rameau's operas and Lully's revivals for the Académie Royale de Musique, and finally Marc-François Bêche, who was engaged mainly in performances at court.

Although not unknown at an earlier date (for example the title-role in Mozart's Mitridate), roles for this voice were particularly numerous at the beginning of the nineteenth century: for example Lindoro in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri or Rodrigo in Otello.

These include Mark Padmore,[5] Anders J. Dahlin, Rogers Covey-Crump, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Paul Agnew and Cyril Auvity.