Self taught, sheer athleticism, raw passion, powerhouse voice, charismatic presence and movie-star good looks had opera fans captivated from the 1950's until 1976.
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Franco Corelli, Italian Tenor of Power and Charisma, and Pillar of the Met, Dies at 82

New York Times
By Anthony Tommasini
October 30, 2003

Franco Corelli, the Italian tenor whose powerhouse voice, charismatic presence and movie-star good looks earned him the adoration of opera fans from the 1950's until his retirement in 1976, died yesterday in Milan. He was 82 and lived in Milan.

He had been suffering from heart problems, said Tony Russo, a former manager

The enthusiasm for Mr. Corelli among the rank and file of opera fans was not always shared by connoisseurs and critics. A largely self-taught singer who came to music late and considered voice teachers "dangerous people" and a "plague to singers," Mr. Corelli was faulted by some for the sheer athleticism and raw passion in his singing. Those same qualities drove other opera buffs to ecstasy.

Mr. Corelli was famous for shamelessly prolonging full-voiced, climactic top notes. On a pirated recording of his 1957 debut at the Royal Opera House in London, in Puccini's "Tosca," he holds Cavaradossi's defiant, high-note cry of "Vittoria!" in Act II for a full 12 seconds, causing the audience to erupt with bravos even as the music continues.

During the 1960's the anti-Corelli sentiment among critics was epitomized by Alan Rich, who in a 1966 article for The New York Herald Tribune acknowledged the vibrancy and white heat of Mr. Corelli's singing, but considered him a throwback to an earlier era when, from Mr. Rich's perspective, musical compromises were common and stylistic refinement lacking. He is "not employed by an opera," Mr. Rich wrote. "He employs it to serve purposes it was not meant to serve."

But Mr. Corelli had plenty of defenders, including Harold C. Schonberg of The New York Times. Reviewing Mr. Corelli's Cavaradossi in a 1965 Met production with Maria Callas, Mr. Schonberg said that the tenor's voice "rolled through the house in a glorious manner." Noting the expressive liberties taken by Mr. Corelli, he added that the performance "had its own kind of logic."

Mr. Corelli was a greater artist than he was often given credit for. Displaying impressive curiosity and intelligence, he championed neglected operas, like Donizetti's "Poliuto," as well as contemporary works like Salvatore Allegra's 1946 "Romulus." He contributed significantly to the revived interest in the early-19th-century composer Gasparo Spontini by making his 1954 La Scala debut in "La Vestale," which also starred Callas, and by performing Spontini's grand German opera "Agnes von Hohenstaufen," an obscure work, at the Maggio Musicale in Florence.

He earned great respect from the fearsomely demanding Callas, who in Mr. Corelli finally had someone with whom she could act. To the soprano Birgit Nilsson, he was about the only tenor who could match her power in Puccini's "Turandot." Ms. Nilsson still enjoys telling the story of a 1961 performance they did of "Turandot" while on tour with the Met in Boston. Mr. Corelli was incensed that in a climactic moment of the second act Ms. Nilsson had held a high C longer than he had.

So, in the third act, instead of placing a stage kiss on her cheek, he bit her in the neck. After the performance she told Rudolf Bing, the Met's general manager, that she would not be able to continue on to Cleveland because she had been bitten by a tenor and had rabies. Though there were numerous witnesses to the event, Mr. Corelli always denied that it happened.

He did not deny the story of his angrily attacking a student in a third-tier box who heckled him at the opera house in Naples, Italy, during a performance of "Il Trovatore." Outraged, Mr. Corelli bounded backstage, ran up three flights of stairs to the box and, finding the door locked, broke it down with his shoulder. In his Manrico costume, complete with sword, Mr. Corelli charged at the young man, but was restrained by two ushers. He was so infuriated that he lost his voice for 20 minutes, returning to the stage just in time to sing what he always considered his greatest account ever of the call-for-revenge tenor aria "Di Quella Pira."

For all his temper, Mr. Corelli often suffered crippling nervousness before appearing onstage. His preperformance ritual included eating steak tartare heavily garnished with lemon and covered with pieces of raw garlic, a meal he consumed with scant regard for whichever soprano he was about to face in love duets.

Though the sheer physical presence of Mr. Corelli's sound was the most striking quality of his voice, he was capable of great poignancy and dulcet pianissimos. As his career developed, so did his artistry. One cannot listen to his 1968 EMI Classics recording of Gounod's "Roméo et Juliette" and charge him with musical insensitivity. His French diction may not be idiomatic, and his phrasing lacks a certain French refinement. But he sings with lyrical opulence and strikes an affecting balance between ardency and tenderness.

Franco Corelli was born on April 8, 1921, in Ancona, part of a region of Italy that produced Beniamino Gigli, Mario Del Monaco, Renata Tebaldi and several other illustrious singers. His father was a ship worker and his family had no particular background in music. Born 10 yards from the Adriatic coastline, he loved the sea and enrolled in a naval engineering program at the University of Bologna. His studies were cut short when a friend, an amateur singer impressed by Mr. Corelli's raw vocal talent, urged him to enter a competition. Though he lost, he was sufficiently encouraged to enter the Pesaro Conservatory of Music.

There he fared badly, working with two successive voice teachers who, he asserted, caused him to lose his upper register. For a while he tried to turn himself into a baritone, but soon gave up that idea. He decided to become his own teacher, which he did by listening endlessly to recordings of great tenors — Caruso, Lauri-Volpi, Pertile, Gigli — and imitating their stylistic nuances and vocal effects.

In 1951 he entered and won the respected competition of the Maggio Musicale in Florence. The prize was a debut at the Spoleto Festival that fall. His debut role was to be Radames in Verdi's "Aida," which he studied for three months with the conductor Giuseppe Bertelli. But feeling that he lacked the technical finesse and legato for the role, he switched to Don José in Bizet's "Carmen," a role that can be pulled off with "explosive impulse," as he put it in a 1996 interview for Opera News.

Three months after his solid outing as Don José, he joined the Rome Opera, where he based himself for four years. His debut there came in 1953 in a difficult 1922 opera, Zandonai's "Giulietta e Romeo." Before long he was known for memorable accounts of the leading tenor roles in Giordano's "Andrea Chénier," Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," Puccini's "Fanciulla del West" and "Bohème," and Verdi's "Aida," "Don Carlos" and "Ernani." His active repertory eventually included some 30 roles.

In 1958 he married Loretta di Lelio, whom he had met the year before when she came backstage for his autograph at the Rome Opera House. After their marriage, Mrs. Corelli gave up her fledgling career as a soprano to serve as her husband's devoted secretary, business manager, public relations agent, cook and English translator. She is Mr. Corelli's only immediate survivor.

The role of his Met debut on Jan. 27, 1961, was Manrico in "Il Trovatore"; it was a historic night that was also the Met debut of Leontyne Price as Leonora. In his Times review Mr. Schonberg wrote that Mr. Corelli's large-scaled voice was "produced explosively" and had "something of an exciting animal drive" about it. He cautioned that the dashing tenor's voice was not yet an "especially suave instrument" and that his "art does need some refining and polishing." Six weeks later Mr. Corelli appeared opposite Ms. Nilsson in "Turandot," the Met's first production of the opera in 30 years.

Mr. Corelli became indispensable to the Met, singing 19 roles in 15 seasons for a total of 365 performances. Knowing that his handsome physique was part of his allure, Mr. Corelli readily supplied his fans with his vital statistics: 6 feet 1 inch tall; nearly 200 pounds; a chest measuring, at rest, 47 inches. With his penetrating brown eyes, Errol Flynn visage and star power, he wound up modeling evening clothes for Town and Country magazine. To keep in shape and protect his voice, he neither drank nor smoked. For relaxation he relished horseback riding, tennis, swimming and skiing. Fans loved reading about his compulsion for photography (he had 12 cameras) and his fondness for luxury cars. (At one time he owned a Jaguar, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, a Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac.)

When Mr. Corelli announced his retirement in 1976 he was only 55. It seemed too soon to his fans, not to mention general managers everywhere. But, as he explained in the 1996 Opera News interview: "I felt that my voice was a little tired, a little opaque, less brilliant than before. The singer's life cost me a great deal. I was full of apprehension and mad at everyone. I was a bundle of nerves, I wasn't eating or sleeping."

During Mr. Corelli's prime years, opera buffs and critics hotly debated the quality of his technique and artistry. Today's opera buffs only wish they had a Franco Corelli to battle over.

Franco Corelli, Italian Tenor of Power and Charisma, and Pillar of the Met, Dies at 82
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/obituaries/
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