I don’t miss the pressures, but I do miss the joy of singing and

performing.” —Franco Corelli

IN RECENT YEARS, the legendary tenor Franco Corelli
participated in a series of interviews with Stefan Zucker, host
of “Opera Fanatic,” the popular (now defunct) late-night
program on New York radio station WKCR-FM. They also
collaborated on a theater series, An Evening with Franco
Corelli and Stefan Zucker. The following comments are
excerpted from these programs. (For information about the 7
Corelli interview tapes, see our full catalog).
Stefan Zucker: It’s said that before you began your career you
lost your high notes and became a baritone. What happened?
Franco Corelli: I was young and didn’t know how to use my
voice. My vocal cords were unable to sustain the pressure to
which I subjected them. Since I was very athletic, with a
strong diaphragm, my voice’s birthright was great volume of
breath and breath span. After three months of lessons with
soprano Rita Pavoni, I lost my voice, and then for a period of
three or four months I studied as a baritone.
     When I was a boy, Tito Gobbi gave a concert in my
hometown, Ancona. He said that singing is like sport. In sport
if you get tired, you still keep on pushing, and without proper
training I drove my voice. After a page of music, my voice
would get lower. I thought that to get through an entire aria,
I’d have to make the switch to baritone. I did have a big
enough middle register to enable me to pass for one.
SZ: Were you successful as a baritone?
FC: No. The technique I was studying wasn’t a good one and
led me to close my throat. I used the throat muscles so much
that the voice didn’t pass through freely.
SZ: What technique did you adopt ultimately?
FC: A friend, Carlo Scaravelli, who was studying with Arturo
Melocchi, taught me his approach, involving singing with the
larynx held low. After a few months, I regained my freedom
in singing and my high notes.
SZ: Did you yourself study with Melocchi?
FC: I went to him sometimes, although some advised me he
was a throat-wrecker. His method was based on opening the
throat. When you yawn, the throat is open. A truly open throat
remains that open.
     Melocchi taught [Mario] Del Monaco for a number of
years. Because he began to perform a few years before I did, I
used him as my example, scrutinizing everything he did
throughout his career. He sang with the larynx lowered as far
as it would go. Melocchi’s tenors all came to resemble Del
Monaco in tone color, range and style. This means that, for
better or worse, Melocchi taught a real technique.
SZ: What are its pros and cons?
FC: The lowered larynx permits you to have a vibrant, strong,
brilliant voice, like steel, but it does tend to prevent you from
singing sweetly. It also can cause problems with mezza-voce
and legato.
SZ: According to Del Monaco’s autobiography, La Mia Vita e
i Miei Successi, at the beginning of his career he appeared as
Ernesto and Alfredo—and couldn’t be heard. Then he became
among the first to study with Melocchi, who had learned the
lowered-larynx technique in China from a Russian—the
technique previously was unknown in Italy. To sing Verdi
with a lowered larynx is as anachronistic as playing Bach on a
concert grand—although the result can be thrilling.
FC: In today’s theaters, with today’s louder and more brilliant
orchestras, singers need the power and steel that come from
the lowered larynx.
SZ: With some other methods, the larynx may lower as a by-
product, but with Melocchi’s method, lowering the larynx is
the beginning of everything. Carried to an extreme, this road
leads to Luigi Ottolini, a tenor who was unable to change
vocal color, although he had a concentrated, focused sound
with immense ring. [He is the Radamès on an Aida highlights
recording with Nilsson.] Like Del Monaco, he had difficulty
modulating dynamics, with soft singing in particular. He had a
strong voice that was not particularly useful for musical or
dramatic purposes. According to La Mia Vita, Melocchi
recommended that Del Monaco not try to sing with nuance or
real dynamic modulation.
FC: With the laryngeal method you must know your vocal
organ very well, what you can do and how far you can go. For
example, I heard some who pushed their larynxes down to the
point that they sounded as if they had bronchitis. [He imitates
them.] With this technique, you can make your vocal cords
suffer. Many who teach it cause their pupils to force their
voices to the point of ruination. I ultimately modified the
method so that my larynx “floats”—I do not keep it lowered
to the maximum at all times.
SZ: Tell us about the history of your voice. How was it when
you began to sing?
FC: When I began, my natural voice was not beautiful. I had a
strong voice, and people told me that was my best quality.
Still, no one believed in me. I began to sing as a joke. A friend
and I listened to records and sang for hours and hours, and
that’s when I fell in love with singing. Before entering a
competition, I had seen only two or three operas. I lost that
competition because I screamed too much but won the next
one because I was in wonderful voice and my screaming
excited the judges. The prize was to be my debut, in Spoleto
in September 1951, as Radamès.
     I studied the part for three months with the conductor,
Giuseppe Bertelli, but I didn’t have enough technique for
Radamès. Little by little I began to lose my voice, while
singing the third and fourth acts. They had me change to Don
José. In Aïda  you need legato, bel canto and style. Carmen is
an opera of explosive impulse, and you can succeed in it if
you have enough temperament. Carmen also is congenial to
me because it isn’t very high. It does have high notes, but they
are well situated and not extremely difficult. And it stays in
one tessitura.
     Three months after my debut I went to the Rome Opera,
where I remained for four years. My first opera there was
Zandonai’s Giulietta e Romeo, a very difficult work. The next
month came Adriana Lecouvreur, the following month
Carmen at Caracalla. After that, my life was easy. I was very
lucky. But I was humble and studied for hours and hours,
asking people what they thought about my voice and what
were my mistakes, what were my worst notes, and if I could
change them. I asked if I could change my vocal color, which
I didn’t like.
     For three or four years I didn’t believe my career could
continue, because, unlike today, the theater was full of
wonderful voices. I began with a voice that wasn’t so
interesting, but I tried to make it beautiful by infusing it with
some sentiments, genuine and simple sentiments.
SZ: Francesco Tamagno and Aureliano Pertile were nearly the
last dramatic tenors to have made diminuendos—until you.
How did you learn to sing pianissimo?
FC: I first sang pianissimo in 1954, in Rome, in Don Carlo.
The conductor was Gabriele Santini, one of the greatest. He
taught me well, but I was singing too strongly. I arrived at the
last act a little tired—my throat and breathing were tired. The
A-flat on the word “mancherò” was difficult for me, and I
made what I thought was a bad effect on it. People said, “You
had a remarkable moment there, attacking the note strongly
and making a diminuendo.” I learned to sing pianissimo from
that.
SZ: Within three years of your debut, you went on to La Scala
in La Vestale.
FC: For me it was important to sing an opening night at La
Scala that early in my career. The engagement was prestigious
because of all the famous tenors around.
SZ: What is the story of your vibrato?
FC: When I began to record, I was horrified and stopped right
away, because I heard that my voice trembled. I was pushing
too much because of lack of adequate breath control. [He
caricatures himself.] Although I didn’t study so much before
my debut, I certainly did afterward, little by little refining the
sound, learning to control my breath and to push less. My
legato improved, and my vibrato subsided.
SZ: You of course did conquer Radamès.
FC: Radamès represented my arrival in the high repertory. I
tried it out for one performance in 1953 but only started to
sing it with some frequency in ’55.
SZ: In the next few years you were offered still higher
repertory, including Poliuto and Ugonotti.
FC I had no choice but to study and refine my technique
further.
SZ: What was your highest note at the beginning of your
career?
FC: At the beginning I had problems with top notes, so at my
first audition I sang “Giunto sul passo estremo” [Mefistofele],
because it goes up only to A-flat. I was afraid to attempt
anything higher. My topmost note was about B-flat.
SZ: What was the highest note you ever sang in performance?
FC: I sang Poliuto five times with Callas and three times with
[Leyla] Gencer. In each of the performances with Gencer I
interpolated high D-natural.
SZ: In 1962 you were hailed at La Scala for your
performances of Gli Ugonotti. Was that tenor part the most
athletic you sang?
FC: Yes. Carmen, Norma and Forza were easy for my voice,
which was, however, a little too heavy and low for Poliuto
and Ugonotti. Before the Ugonotti rehearsals began, the
conductor, Gianandrea Gavazzeni, said, “I don’t know if
Corelli is able to handle it.” He came to my apartment, and I
sang the part for him. On leaving, he remarked, “I never
dreamt you could sing an opera such as this.” It was, however,
very difficult for me.
SZ: Considering how tenor careers often progressed, one
would have expected you to continue in either of two
directions—with heroic high roles, such as Arnoldo in
Guglielmo Tell, or with dramatic low ones, such as Otello.
FC: Mine was a strange career, for I began with heavy
repertory and then went to the lyric French repertory.
SZ: Why did you do that?
FC: I had made my Met debut in 1961, in Il Trovatore. The
Met had not done Roméo for many years. In 1964, two years
before singing it at the Met, I performed it in Philadelphia.
The performance was good—the public liked it. Mr. Bing
wanted to produce the opera and paid me well to sing it. I also
sang Werther at his urging and made a recording of Faust.
The roles were very difficult for me, especially Faust. I was
apprehensive, thinking I couldn’t sing sweetly enough. I feel I
did succeed in the end—you hear a tenor different from the
one in Andrea Chénier, Ernani, Aiïa, Trovatore. In “Salut!
demeure” I sound like a true romantic tenor. I threw away
some recitatives, though, because I didn’t know them well
enough.
SZ: Looking back, do you feel this repertory was a good
choice?
FC: I ended up not singing operas better suited to me, Manon
Lescaut and Otello in particular.
SZ: In 1958, in Rome, you sang Pollione opposite the Norma
of Callas when she walked out of the performance. What
really happened?
FC: She was a little sick, and that didn’t permit her to sing at
her best. Some in the audience heckled her. When she came
offstage after Act I, she was completely calm, but then she
began to stew and announced she was cancelling. The
management went to her, to push her to continue the
performance. She became a lioness and began to scream. She
threw some vases and a chair. Little by little she lost her
voice. When she left the theater, however, she looked elegant,
as if nothing had happened.
SZ: Are you suggesting that she could have continued the
performance had she not started to scream?
FC: Absolutely. She was in possession of a fabulous voice
and an excellent technique. As late as 1958 she was always
able to sing. She could have continued.
SZ: People think of you as having been nervous, but in
general they do not say you were temperamental. There are,
however, some exceptions. You had a run-in with conductor
Fabien Sevitzky during Carmen rehearsals at Verona. What
took place?
FC: We had a big problem, and I wasn’t the only one. The
beginning of the fight was between [Giulietta] Simionato and
this maestro. Then [Ettore] Bastianini fought with him. They
were upset because of his strange tempos. He was more
interested in the design of the accompaniment than in the
vocal lines and highlighted the orchestration at the expense of
the singers. Some of his tempos were extremely fast, others
unduly broad. My turn to fight with him came when I was
singing “La fleur.” Ordinarily I sang the aria in three minutes,
but with him it took more than five. Finishing on my knees in
front of Simionato, I stood up and declared, “Maestro, for me
it’s impossible to sing with you. You are really great, but my
voice isn’t good for your tempo.” We had some back and
forth, and I left the stage. The sovrintendente came. Maestro
Sevitzky said, “I’m really sorry, but mine is the correct tempo,
not the one you hear on records. The people who made them
didn’t know what they were doing.” The sovrintendente
rejoined, “Maestro, you are really great, as Mr. Corelli said,
but under these circumstances it is impossible for me to keep
you.” Sevitzky left.
SZ: Why did you stop your career in 1976?
FC: I was a little tired, 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.
     At first I thought I would simply relax for a time and then
return, but after three months I still had no desire to sing. I felt
so comfortable that I said to myself, “Why go back? The
public demands more and more of you, and if one night
you’re unable to deliver, they ask why.” I don’t miss the
pressures, but I do miss the joy of singing and performing. My
voice did regain its bloom. When I’m in good voice, I ask
myself, “What if...?”
SZ: When you sing for me today, your singing has more
warmth, heart and caress than it did twenty-five years ago.
You sing with more gradations of volume, and your voice has
become more adolescent in timbre, more suitable to the poetry
of Chénier. You sing "Che gelida manina" with more
sweetness and tenderness now.
FC: It’s true. I do look deeper today, because, before, I
thought about voice before everything else.
SZ: Besides concentrating more on dramatic tenor parts, is
there anything you would do differently if you had your career
to do over again?
FC: Well, on some days I feel I’d sing with less force and
with more variety of dynamics and more passion, with more
heart—like [Beniamino] Gigli. On other days I still prefer my
old approach, because it was more vigorous. Nowadays I
change back and forth.
    
In 1989-90 listeners to “Opera Fanatic” voted for Favorite
Tenor of the Century. With forty-seven singers receiving a
grand total of 600 votes, Corelli placed first, with 185 votes,
Jussi Bjoerling second, with 177 votes, Enrico Caruso third,
with sixty-nine votes, and Gigli fourth, with fifty votes. For a
detailed list, click on link.
     Listeners expressed a longing for Corelli’s animal
excitement and maintained that no one since measures up.
     Mr. Zucker is at work on a book, Franco Corelli & a
Revolution in Singing