For many people, opera is synonymous with the reign of the Prima Donna. From time to time, though, there appears on the operatic firmament a tenor of such magnitude that he ends up galvanizing fans as much, if not more, than his female counterparts. In the early years of the 20th century, the name Enrico Caruso was on everyone’s lips. From the 1970s till the beginning of the new millennium Luciano Pavarotti was a household word. Earlier in the same century, from the beginning of the 50s till the middle of the 70’s another Italian mega-star exploded in the operatic world, leaving lovers of that art form fairly dazzled and dazed: Franco Corelli.
His career was relatively short. It began in Spoleto, Italy, in 1951, but just twenty-five years later, in 1976, he had more or less bid farewell to the stage and concert hall. In a very significant sense, however, he was a phenomenon even more remarkable than Pavarotti. Franco Corelli represented a very rare vocal commodity: he was a tenore di forza, meaning a tenor capable of singing the most strenuous, dramatic roles in the Italian opera repertory without straining his voice or tearing it to shreds.
Franco Corelli possessed gifts that were almost too good to be real. He had a huge, voluptuous voice that could roll effortlessly through the biggest auditoriums, filling every corner with effulgent sound. Although his blockbuster singing could overpower his listeners, Corelli could also beguile their ears with the most honeyed, poignant phrases. He could even taper his voice down to a tender pianissimo.
If that were not enough, he looked like a god of Greek or Roman mythology. He had a noble countenance, dark brown eyes that smouldered like a volcano, beautiful wavy hair, and the body of an Olympic swimmer. When he made his début at the Metropolitan Opera in 1961, his co-star, the great American soprano Leontyne Price, exclaimed: “I just love singing opposite Franco. He has such gorgeous legs!”
For once one could understand why operatic heroines like Mimi in La Bohème and Leonora in Il trovatore would fall madly in love with their tenor lead. To top it off, Corelli boasted a charismatic stage presence. He was a born actor; he moved with an exciting animal drive and seemed to embody the character he was playing. Even the most celebrated diva of the 20th century, Maria Callas, appreciated his talent, and she could be fearsome in her demands for dramatic excellence. No wonder his admirers referred to him as the operatic Apollo.
Some opera fans expect their idols to behave like larger-than-life entities and, in this respect, too, Franco Corelli did not disappoint. He had a flamboyant personality prone to displays of temperament as well as temper tantrums when provoked or when he thought that a fellow artist was capable of out-singing him. Once during a performance of Verdi’s Il trovatore at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, the booing of a spectator in a box on the third level infuriated him. Corelli rushed off the stage, tore up the three flights of stairs, then, with his muscular shoulder rammed open the locked door of the box where the young heckler was sitting, and threatened to run his sword through his tormentor’s body. It took two ushers to restrain the tenor and prevent him from making good on his threats.
Again at the San Carlo, during the dress rehearsal of another Verdi work, Don Carlo, Corelli, and the bass-baritone Boris Christoff got into a violent argument that nearly degenerated into a physical fight. Again brandishing a sword, Franco threatened to disembowel his colleague.
His most famous confrontations, however, occurred when singing in performances of Puccini’s Turandot with the incomparable dramatic soprano, Birgit Nilsson. This Swedish artist was indeed a force to reckon with. Her voice had the power of a blowtorch. It could blast its way through steel. Moreover, she was no shrinking violet. Although normally the most cooperative of colleagues, she would react with devastating swiftness if any fellow-singer dared cross her. Franco Corelli tried it during a matinee broadcast of the opera at the old Met. I can vouch for the truth of this story because I was there and saw what happened with my own eyes.
Both singers soared to a stunning high C near the end of Turandot’s aria, Inquesta reggia. The conductor, Joseph Rosenstock, motioned to them to get off that high note. Being a gracious artist, Nilsson complied immediately. Corelli, being an inveterate show-off, insisted on holding the note a second or two longer. Nilsson shot him a dirty look as though to say, “O.K., you bastard, I’ll fix you!” When Corelli condescended to come down to the lower note, she just held it and held it until his lungs gave out. Then Nilsson strode down the staircase majestically and punched him in the stomach.
Another flare-up took place between them when the Met was on tour in Boston. Corelli, being as vain as a peacock, became furious when he thought that Nilsson had held on to a high C longer than he did. He stormed off the stage in high dudgeon. Rudolph Bing, the Met’s General Manager, went to Corelli’s dressing room to find him screaming, his wife screaming and their dog barking. There was blood on the table where the outraged tenor had slammed his fist down. Being a consummate diplomat, Bing found just the right words to persuade Franco to continue the performance. “You know,” he said, “in America, it is considered cowardly to retreat before a woman.” Corelli returned to the stage and in the final act, when he was supposed to kiss Nilsson, he bit her on the neck instead. At the end of the opera, Nilsson told Bing: “I can’t go on to Cleveland. I’ve caught rabies!”
Despite their run-ins on stage, Birgit Nilsson actually liked Franco Corelli very much and considered him a friend. An extremely perceptive and intelligent woman, she quickly figured out that his temper tantrums were the result of an almost pathological stage fright. She could see that beneath the cocky, aggressive façade was a very gentle, kind-hearted man feeling a compulsive need to prove himself again and again because he was so desperately insecure. When they were onstage together, however, he remained in confrontational mode. Singing opposite Franco, she once observed, was very much like being a matador in the bullring. One could never predict how Corelli/the bull would react. Yet Nilsson did enjoy singing opposite him. As she willingly acknowledged, Franco was the only tenor capable of “standing up” to her vocally.
Franco Corelli’s desperate insecurity explains why he decided to retire in 1976 at the age of 55. The stress of performing and living up every night to his high standards had become unbearable. “The singer’s life cost me a great deal,” he stated. “I was full of apprehension and mad at everyone. I was a bundle of nerves, I wasn’t eating or sleeping.” Franco was also convinced that his opulent voice was losing some of its lustre. “I felt that my voice was a little tired,” he insisted, “a little opaque, less brilliant than before.”
Of course, the overwhelming majority of his fans, including myself, disagreed with him. Nevertheless, we could not help but admire the courage this man showed in making this ruthless assessment of his vocal condition. We saluted his determination to leave the operatic stage with honour and dignity before his voice really started to deteriorate. In this respect, he resembled another colleague, the beloved diva, Renata Tebaldi who, incidentally came from the same Marche region of Italy as did Franco. She, too, had the wisdom to give up her career at more or less the same age.
In his retirement years, Franco became a very popular vocal coach. This represents an ironic twist of destiny since he loathed voice teachers. He always considered them “dangerous people” and a “plague to singers.” After professors at the Pesaro Conservatory of Music nearly wrecked his voice, he decided to be his own teacher. He rebuilt his resplendent instrument by listening to recordings made by great Italian tenors of the past, especially Caruso. They were the ones who taught him all he needed to know about technique and interpretation. In fact, he wore out three sets of Caruso recordings during the course of his career.
Franco Corelli suffered a stroke in 2003 and passed away shortly afterward at the age of 82. Like his illustrious predecessor, Caruso, however, his voice continues to reverberate within the minds and hearts of his admirers around the world thanks to the many wonderful recordings that were made when he was at the zenith of his career. My one regret—shared by just about all of his fans—is that he never endeavoured to master that Mt. Everest of tenor roles in the Italian repertoire: Verdi’s Otello. He surely possessed all the vocal, dramatic, and physical resources to do the part justice. Perhaps Franco wanted to leave us with an aura of mystery still surrounding him.
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