Dead Tenors’ Society wraps up its monthlong 100th Birthday tribute to Franco Corelli (1921-2003). Not to worry, however…there will be plenty more Corelli in the coming months.

This legendary artist was born in Ancona to a ship builder and his wife. There may have been a bit of musical pedigree in Corelli’s background. According to some sources, his grandfather, brother and two of his uncles all pursued singing careers with varying degrees of success. Although vocally gifted himself, young Corelli originally planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and studied naval engineering at the University of Bologna. While there, he entered a vocal competition at the urging of a friend. Although Corelli didn’t win, judges convinced him to enter the Pesaro Conservatory to pursue vocal studies. The academic approach to vocalism didn’t appeal to the young tenor and he soon withdrew from the conservatory. Although Corelli later studied briefly with Arturo Melocchi (the teacher of Mario del Monaco) and Giacomo Lauri Volpi, he was, for all practical purposes, a self-taught singer, and managed to build an impressive technique.

In 1951, Corelli entered and won the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. This victory was supposed to have led to a debut at Spoleto in Aïda that fall, but after studying Radames, Corelli felt that he was not ready for the role. Instead, the young tenor debuted as Don José in Carmen on August 26, 1951. Both public and critics alike received him enthusiastically and he was invited to Rome’s Teatro dell’ Opera, making his debut there in Zandonai’s Giulietta e Romeo on January 31, 1952. Corelli’s star rose quickly with appearances in Trieste, San Remo, Turin, Palermo, Florence, Ravenna, Naples, Modena, Parma and Bologna. His La Scala debut occurred as Licinio opposite the Giulia of Maria Callas in Spontini’s La Vestale on December 7, 1954. Other important debuts took place, including Venice’s La Fenice (as Dick Johnson in Fanciulla del West) and the tenor’s first international appearance, at Lisbon’s Teatro São Carlos in Carmen.

In just a few years, Corelli’s repertoire had grown to over 15 parts, including Cavaradossi in Tosca, Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur and Pollione in Norma. With the exception of a few engagements in Lisbon and Madrid, Corelli sang exclusively in Italy until making his Vienna Staatsoper debut as Radames in May of 1957. Appearances in London, Nice, Stuttgart and Munich followed and Corelli made his long awaited Metropolitan Opera debut as Manrico in Il Trovatore on January 27, 1961. He was a sensation and spent the next 15 seasons as a stalwart member of the company. Corelli sang over 360 performances of 19 roles including Calaf in Turandot, Canio in Pagliacci, Turiddu in Cavalleria Rusticana, Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino, and the title roles in Son Carlo, Andrea Chénier and Roméo et Juliette.

Two decades of crisscrossing the globe in the most punishing repertoire began to take a toll on Corelli’s voice and he began to curtail his public appearances by the mid-1970s. The tenor’s well known stage fright was also a factor and following a final performance as Rodolfo in an open air performance at Torre del Lago on August 13, 1976, Franco Corelli bade farewell to the opera stage. He was lured from retirement for a handful of concerts in 1980 and 1981, revealing a voice that was still in fine shape. Corelli devoted his final years to teaching voice at Monmouth University in Long Branch, NJ and his private studio in New York. In spite of his very public dismissal of voice teachers as unnecessary and even harmful, the retired tenor enjoyed the fruits of a very lucrative teaching practice. Following a stoke, Franco Corelli passed away in Milan on October 29, 2003. He was 82.

Franco Corelli was a force of nature among tenors. In the era of such luminaries as del Monaco, Kraus, di Stefano, Bergonzi, Valletti, Raimondi, Gedda, Vickers, Labò and Tucker, he managed to stand out as a true superstar of the opera world. His repertoire of over 40 roles encompassed everything from Raoul in Les Huguenots to the title role in Werther. He was heard from the stages of Opéra de Paris, Barcelona’s Teatro Liceu, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, London’s Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Arena di Verona and the Hamburg Staatsoper. Corelli’s combination of extraordinary vocal prowess (his atomic top notes and breathtaking diminuendi are the stuff of legend), good looks and intense stage presence continue to astound listeners some four decades after he sang his last. In short, Franco Corelli produced some of the most thrilling singing to ever come from a human throat…period. In this recording, Corelli gives a playful reading of Rodolfo Falvo’s “Guapparia”. This was recorded in London for EMI in December of 1961, Franco Ferraris conducting.

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