Franco Corelli
Gossip! Innuendo! Anecdotal fragments from which wild conclusions have been drawn. Those are only some of the problems to be confronted when writing the story of the last great Italian heroic tenor, Franco Corelli. I have attempted on three previous occasions to codify his career and each time I ended up abandoning the project because of the difficulty separating truth from fiction. To report as fact the large number of incidents that are supposed to have happened, and which are part of his legend, would be irresponsible. So, in frustration I have decided to omit any, except for those about which I have some first hand knowledge, and they are few enough. I take full responsibility for these assumptions, and in cases where they might be deemed as negative, I offer them with no malice. Franco Corelli is an extremely enigmatic and complicated man, one who has been extraordinarily generous, kind and available to friends while jealously guarding his privacy for all the years that he has been a public figure.
I’ll begin with his birth. Is it simply a conceit that his birthdate is not even noted in his one official biography, or was it an oversight? From “Franco Corelli, Un uomo, Una Voce” by Marina Boagno. “Era una bella notte di primavera…..”. It was a beautiful spring night. The chapter goes on to say that “it is probable that it was a beautiful spring night in which Franco Corelli was born at Ancona… That is a remarkable entry since Corelli was involved with the production of the book. The only place that I have found a date is in Kutsch-Riemens, which is often incorrect, and there it is given as 8 April 1921. Perhaps!
Franco avoided serious musical studies and was, as has been said, almost completely self taught, though he did rely on friends who studied at conservatories to relay to him that which they had learned. He would then imitate their instructions and submit himself to their criticism. It was at Spoleto that he debuted after receiving help from Maestro Ottavio Ziino and others connected to musical establishments at Rome and at the “experimental” facility of Spoleto. He debuted in the role of Don Jose on 26 August 1951 with Lucia Daniele as the Gypsy seductress. It was a roaring success, and he was declared to have a voice of extraordinary range and power. However, he did not have immediate engagements, and it took some persuading to convince the management of Rome’s Teatro del Opera that they should take a chance on the unknown tenor. On 31 January 1952, he was presented in Zandonai’s “Giulietta e Romeo” with Merces Fortunati. His mentor and friend, Ziino was on the podium, and Franco sang three performances to excellent reviews. After a hiatus of four months he returned to Rome for a single performance of “Adriana Lecouvrer” with Maria Caniglia, Maria Benedetti and Tito Gobbi and it was this revival that drew the comment, “He was worth the risk”, from the Opera’s general manager. Franco was retained for performances of “Carmen” during the company’s summer season at Caracalla. On 12 July, he appeared as Don Jose with Pia Tassinari as the protagonista. After four hugely successful performances, he traveled to Trieste’s Castello di San Giusto for another debut in the Bizet opera, this time with Giulietta Simionato. In August he repeated his success at Sanremo and in October at Turin, again with Simionato.
Rome determined that Franco was going to be a major force in its ensemble and on 14 December he sang in “Boris Godunov” with Boris Christoff. Theirs was to be a very stormy collaboration, terminating in a frightening incident at Rome in 1958, after which they never appeared together again.
After a debut in “Carmen” at Palermo’s Massimo on 20 February 1953, Corelli returned to Rome on 11 March for the World Premiere of Guerrini’s “Enea” with Antonietta Stella and Christoff. The performance was well reviewed but the opera was poorly received and was dropped after two performances. On 9 April, Franco sang with Maria Meneghini Callas for the first time, when, at Rome they appeared together in “Norma”. The revival and all of its participants, Fedora Barbieri, Giulio Neri and Gabriele Santini, received splendid reviews and enormous receptions in the theater.
Following additional performances of “Carmen” at Rome, Corelli debuted at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino on 26 May in the first Italian production of Prokofiev’s “War and Peace” (“Guerra e Pace”, as it was performed). The huge cast of Rosanna Carteri, Barbieri, Cesy Broggini, Mirto Picchi, Ettore Bastianini, Anselmo Colzani, Renato Capecchi, Italo Tajo and Fernando Corena were recalled to the proscenium countless times and the production enjoyed four performances. Franco had been wise enough to vary his repertoire, to seek and get prestigious engagements of little known, or unknown works, and it was these productions that first brought to him national and international attention. Franco Corelli was one of Italy’s magnet attractions after fewer than two years on the lyric stage.
On 2 July, Franco sang the role of Canio for the first time when he returned to Caracalla. Claral Petrella and Aldo Protti joined him in one of his very few revivals of that role during a thirty year career. The rest of the summer was occupied with Don Jose at Bolzano, Enna and Naples’ Arena Flegrea, and in September he returned to Spoleto for a single performance of “ Pagliacci”. At Ravenna he appeared first in”Carmen”, then in a stellar revival of “Aida” with Caterina Mancini, Elena Nicolai, Protti and Neri. Franco debuted at Trieste’s Teatro Verdi as Pollione to the Norma of Callas on 19 November. Nicolai and Christoff completed the impressive cast and there were four hugely praised and sold out performances. The year ended at Naples, where, on 19 December, Franco debuted at the San Carlo in “Carmen” with Simionato, Sena Jurinac and Ugo Savarese.
1954 began at Modena with “Norma” and on the 9th he brought his portrayal to Parma with Mancini, Nicolai and Guglielmo Ferrara. At the end of the month he returned to Rome for Allegra's "Romulus” with Elizabetta Barbato and his season there continued into March with “Don Carlo”. He, Mancini, Nicolai, Gobbi, Christoff and Neri appeared four times to enormous critical and popular receptions. Franco concluded his Rome season with four performances of Gluck’s “Ifigenia in Aulide” with Marcella Pobbe and Christoff. Corelli had impressed everyone with his facility in an amazingly diverse range of operatic styles, and because of this flexibility he appeared at Florence on 4 May in the Italian premiere of Spontini’s “Agnese di Hohenstaufen” with Lucille Udovick, Dorothy Dow, Enzo Mascherini and Anselmo Colzani. Again, Franco was not only received with great respect but with genuine enthusiasm. It might be noted, in light of later events, that he was regarded as a singer whose musicianship was fairly beyond criticism during this early period on the lyric stages of Italy.
The summer was spent at a number of Italian cities in “Tosca” and “Carmen”, with a particularly successful appearance as Don Jose at Caracalla in August. In late September Corelli recorded “Pagliacci” for RAI of Milan and in the early autumn he appeared in “Carmen” at Bologna and Rovigo before taking a month’s vacation to prepare for his debut at La Scala. Hard work and collegiality were Franco’s benchmarks for success and they had certainly paid off. Maria Callas, who had a definite say in casting decisions for her productions at Scala, was delighted to learn that Franco would join her for the opening night in Spontini’s “La Vestale”.
On 7 December, they, along with Ebe Stignani, Rossi Lemeni, and Luchino Visconti, the “producer”, enjoyed one of the great triumphs in the theater’s long history. Antonino Votto shared in the adulation after he led his orchestra through a broadly conceived reading, in which each singer was afforded the latitude of individual expression while maintaining the cohesive balance that was so necessary to make this nearly unknown opera, with so many marvelous pages, take wing. There were five hysterically received performances. Somehow, Franco found both the strength and the time to appear in “Norma” at Piacenza with Mancini before year’s end. Where would this heady success end, Franco wondered, as he would until the end of his career. Corelli was a worrier, they said, and his reputation as a pacer with a wild eyed drive for perfection was growing. Years later, Callas remembered that Corelli’s kindness to her at the time of “Poliuto” was in part a remembrance of her own solicitations of him at the time of his Scala debut, and, as we shall later learn, in other collaborations.
Arianna Stassinopoulos, in her very controversial book, “Maria Callas, The Woman behind the Legend”, declares: “She even began to be jealous of Franco Corelli, the young tenor making his first Scala appearance, persuading herself that Visconti (who was openly gay) was attracted to him”. Stassinopoulos continues “She (Callas) hated Corelli because he was handsome. It made her nervous - she was wary of beautiful people”. To comment would be both unwise and unfair since I was a young man trying to learn Algebra when these events burst upon the World, but, it should be noted that neither of the “antagonists” ever had a mean word to say about the other. I’ll return to this discussion when we review “Fedora” at La Scala.
Franco sang in “La Fanciulla del West” for the first time at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice on 26 January 1955. Elisabetta Barbato and Gian Giacomo Guelfi fought over the life of the cowboy outlaw for four performances. In February he sang in “Norma” with Mancini and in March, Corelli sang in “Tosca” at Catania’s Teatro Masimo Bellini with Adriana Gurerini and Giuseppi Taddei. It should be noted at this point that the chronicle will not include every engagement, since there were so many as to bore the greatest Corelli fan. I will limit the commentary to new venues, new roles and major casting changes. On 29 April Franco debuted at the Teatro Sao Carlo of Lisbon in Carmen with Simionato, Pobbe and Colzani and upon his return to Italy, he appeared at Ravenna’s Teatro Alighieri in “Norma” with Mancini. Stignani and Uo Novelli. At the Boboli Gardens, on 26 June Corelli joined Anita Cerquetti in the first “Normas” of her career, and after singing six performances to ecstatic audiences, he sang an additional performance with Lucy Kelston. His summer engagements included “Norma” at Caracalla and a debut at the Verona Arena where he first sang in “Carmen” with Simionato and later in “Aida” with Antonietta Stella, Adriana Lazzarini and Protti. In August, at Messina, he sang Radames to the Aida of Cerquetti and in October he, Caniglia and G. Guelfi joined forces in “Tosca” at Turin. The year moved along in its enormously impressive stride with “Aida” at Catania and Naples, “Fanciulla del West” at Trieste and a new production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” at the Rome Opera. The four performances of the Handel work were a watershed experience for Corelli, who sang the role of Sesto; his reviews were superb, his physical presence was overwhelming and it was the subject of enormous discussion in the Italian press.
In February 1956, Franco returned to Venice for “Carmen” with Simionato, the very young Renata Scotto and G.Guelfi and after four wildly cheered performances he appeared with Cerquetti, Lazzarini and Guelfi in “Aida”. On 4 April, Corelli sang in “Fanciulla del West” at La Scala in a performance that has been released many times on both LP and CD. It remains the author’s favorite memento of the opera; Gigliola Frazzoni and Tito Gobbi are in top form, even if overwrought, and Franco’s voice was never heard to greater effect. The tension in act two is an amazing dramatic achievement and the vocalism is beyond criticism.
In late April he returned to Lisbon for “Giulietta e Romeo” and on 21 May he and Maria Callas joined forces in an epic, legendary, and elusive revival of Giordano’s “Fedora”. It has been rumored for some forty years that the Corelli’s have a copy of that tape. I fancy that if that were true, it would have surfaced by now. But, anything is possible. In any case, it is one of the few Callas revivals at La Scala that is not documented in sound. Corelli on Callas: “No one can imagine what it meant to me, a virtual beginner on the stage, only in my second year at La Scala, to work with Callas. I learned so much….Maria was extremely thoughtful with me and tried to make everything easy. And she did. She herself was so involved in the opera that she involved me too. I felt it a duty to respond, to work deeply, as never before, in a way I did not fully comprehend but which I strongly sensed” - Maria Callas, the woman behind the Legend. The admiration that Corelli felt for Callas and that which she manifested to him will be reviewed in a number of additional revivals that joined their unique talents; they are among the most important operatic events in the second half of this century. Mary Curtis Verna, a soprano of some repute who had a not insignificant career at the Met, attended the premiere with her husband, a noted musicologist and conductor. “The performance was likely the most thrilling event of my operatic life as an observer. One cannot imagine the chemistry of that evening unless he were to have been in the audience”. (paraphrased).
In August he returned to Verona for “Tosca” with Frazzoni and Gobbi, a trio that was gaining a wide reputation in Italy as a truly potent combination. There were four sold out and wildly applauded performances. In the autumn Franco sang in Adria in “Tosca” and at Trieste in “Aida”. He took a long breath and then returned to La Scala for his second production of “Giulio Cesare” which was premiered on 10 December. The cast was truly starry: Virginia Zeani, Simionato, Rossi Lemeni and Mario Petri with Gianandrea Gavazzeni on the podium. There were four performances, all received with rapture from audiences who were mostly unfamiliar with the opera, as had been the case in Rome. Again, Franco made headlines, as much for his physical presence as for his singing. He ended the year at Scala in “Aida” with Stella, Simionato, Dino Dondi and Nicola Zaccaria. Di Stefano was in crisis, Del Monaco held sway in two roles, “Otello” and occasional revivals of “Ernani”, but there was no question that Franco Corelli was now Italy’s leading lyrico spinto tenor, and would soon be its most important ambassador around the World.
1957 began at La Scala in “Pagliacci”, and at the end of January, Franco appeared in “Aida” at Rome with Cerquetti, Simionato, G.Guelfi and Neri. “La Fanciulla del West” was revived at Naples in February with Maria Caniglia and in March the San Carlo presented “Andrea Chenier” an opera repeated at Palermo two weeks later. Franco sang Chenier at Lisbon with Frazzoni and Gobbi and then returned to Palermo for “Don Carlo” with Cerquetti, Lazzarini, Enzo Mascherini and and Bernar Ladysz.
Enter Loretta Di Lelio. At Palermo, Franco’s bride to be appeared as Tebaldo in the Don Carlo production. Loretta is the daughter of one of Italy’s most important bassos in this century. Umberto Di Lelio had an international career and appeared repeatedly in every Italian theater. He specialized in buffo roles, but had considerable success in the Verdi repertoire. Loretta received extensive musical training before debuting at Rome in 1941. She sang a large number of comprimario roles including Flora in “Traviata”, Inez in “Trovatore” and Kate Pinkerton and appeared at several Italian operatic centers. There is no documentation on the date of their marriage but it likely occurred late in 1957. In any case, Loretta’s name is indelibly printed upon the professional career of Franco Corelli, and there were repeated instances of stormy scenes both in private and on the backstages of the world. The marriage has survived very well, thank you, and they are enjoying a very tranquil retirement together, as we shall later see.
In May Franco sang in “Khovanscina” at Lisbon with Christoff and then traveled to Madrid for “Tosca”. On 15 May, Corelli debuted at the Vienna Staatsoper as Radames with Stella, Simionato, Protti and Nicola Zaccaria after which he returned once again to Lisbon, this time for Simon Boccanegra with Pobbe, Gobbi and Christoff. At Enghien les Bains (listed in Cerquetti’s chronology as in Belgium and in Corelli’s as in France) he sang in “Norma” with Floriana Cavalli and on 27 June, Franco debuted at London’s Covent Garden in “Tosca” with Zinka Milanov and G. Guelfi. It was a greatly anticipated event, but the revival did not go down very well with either audiences or critics and London was not to be a regular stop on Franco’s schedule. He happily returned to Italy where, at the Verona Arena he sang in “Norma” with Cerquetti, Simionato and Neri to enormous receptions for all. The arena also presented him in five performances of “Carmen”. The summer season concluded at the Terme di Caracalla with “Carmen”, “Andrea Chenier”, “Tosca” and “Aida” and the autumn found him at Bilbao and Oviedo Spain in several of his standard roles, and a rare appearance in “Fedora” at Oviedo’s Teatro Campoamor. After performances of “Fanciulla” at Livorno and “Chenier” at Bergamo, Franco traveled to Rome for a gala opening night performance of “Norma” with Callas. O don fatale!
On 2 January, with Italy’s President, Giovanni Gronchi, in the audience, “Norma” opened the opera season at Rome. An hour later, that season came to a grinding halt when Maria Callas left the theater, claiming illness. Corelli, Miriam Pirazzini, Giulio Neri and Gabriele Santini were informed that the performance would not continue, and the theater was darkened. Most of Italy, especially the press, saw the cancellation as an insult to the president and the nation. Callas was informed that her services were no longer needed, and two nights later Anita Cerquetti appeared on the stage of the Teatro del Opera. The applause was quite unlike anything encountered in a generation. She alternated performances between Rome and Naples, where her season had begun, while most of the World drank up every sordid detail of the “scandal”. Among the singers who stood in Maria’s defense when it became apparent that only litigation would resolve her problem were Simionato and Corelli, both of whom spoke eloquently and with passion about the “Diva’s” integrity as a colleague and as an artist. Callas won the decision and there was an “amicable” settlement. Franco thought he had seen it all!
Three weeks later, during rehearsals for “Don Carlo”, Christoff, who was broiling with anger over Corelli’s perceived indifference to the dramatic situation in the “Auto da Fe”, hurled his sword with intent upon that of his “son” and it was clear to most onlookers that a most dangerous situation had been precipitated. Tito Gobbi stepped between the two at his own peril, but it did end the confrontation. Santini attempted to intervene, but Christoff resisted all attempts to affect a reconciliation between the two. The great but temperamental bass stormed out of the theater and informed Santini later in the day that he would not appear in the production. Mario Petri replaced him, to the disappointment of thousands of patrons who had already sold out the performance. Stella, Neri, and Mancini, who was singing Eboli for the first time, completed the cast. Despite the interruption, the revival was a huge success.
On 6 February Franco appeared at Palermo in “Fanciulla” with Magda Olivero, and they were hailed as defining and unique in their collaboration. “Norma” followed with Cerquetti, Simionato and Modesti. Loretta sang the role of Clotilde. Serafin conducted four truly triumphant performances. So enormous were the receptions that the lights had to be turned off every night so that the theater might be cleared. At Naples, Franco sang with Tebaldi in “Tosca” and later. in a documented performance of “Forza del Destino” with Tebaldi, Oralia Domiguez, Bastianini, and Christoff. Many who have heard it consider it the finest exposition of the opera that they have experienced.
On 19 May Corelli appeared with Callas and Bastianini in “Il Pirata” at La Scala. Callas had already been informed by Ghiringelli that her services would no longer be needed, invoking the Rome scandal, along with a very tenuous accusation about her “cancellation” of one performance of “La Sonnambula” at Edinburgh the previous summer as his excuses. At the last of the five performances, Maria pointed to the box in which the director was seated, and on the words “Palco funesto” stretched her arm directly into his face from the footlights. “Palco” means, among other things, opera box. It brought a huge demonstration from a very partisan Callas audience. The evening ended in chaotic demonstrations for all the participants and it is said that Antonino Votto was perspiring so severely that he had difficulty finding the strength to come to the proscenium for curtain calls.
When Maria Callas next appeared at La Scala it would be with Franco Corelli and Ettore Bastianini. That was not to happen for some two and a half years, and when it did…..
Corelli toured to Wiesbaden, Stuttgart and Munich in “Tosca” in June and in July he again appeared at Caracalla in “Pagliacci” and “Aida”. At Verona he sang in “Turandot” and for the first time with Leontyne Price when they appeared in “Aida”. After additional performances of “Turandot” and “Tosca” at Caracalla, Franco sang in “Tosca” at Bergamo and in “Trovatore” at Bologna. On 29 November, the San Carlo of Naples presented “Andrea Chenier” with Stella and Bastianini, and on 17 December, Corelli returned to La Scala for “Turandot” with Birgit Nilsson and Rosanna Carteri. The year ended at Scala with the Italian premiere of Handle’s “Hercules” with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Barbieri, Bastianini and Jerome Hines.
1959 was an enormously busy time for Franco. Parma saw him in “Turandot”, Palermo hosted him in “Turandot” and “Carmen”, Scala presented “Ernani” with Margherita Roberti, Bastianini and Rossi Lemeni, Lisbon’s Sao Carlo mounted “Turandot” with Inge Borkh and “Trovatore” with Regine Crespin, Genoa revived “Trovatore” with Leyla Gencer, Barbieri and Colzani, and at La Scala on 9 April, “Carmen” was revived with Simionato. After additional performance of “Trovatore” and a gala concert at Milan, Franco returned to Verona and Caracalla for “Trovatore”. Bilbao mounted productions of “Trovatore”, “Aida” and “Turandot” and at Livorno he sang in “Tosca” with Tebaldi and Colzani. On 29 November Franco appeared with Magda Olivero, Simionato and Bastianini in the celebrated revival of “Adriana Lecouvrer” at Naples. The evening was an overwhelming success for all the participants, and it is among the author’s most treasured performances. Olivero had been persuaded on two days notice to replace Tebaldi, whose indisposition was apparent during the final dress rehearsal. The eruption that attended Magda’s first solo curtain call has been termed the most emotional in the history of the theater by various commentators. On 22 December Franco returned to Bologna for “Andrea Chenier” and so his year ended.
The litany of triumphs continued throughout 1960, “Chenier” “Turandot” and “Carmen” at La Scala, “Trovatore” at Naples, a debut at Monte Carlo in “Turandot”, “Forza del Destino” and “”Turandot” at Venice, “Chenier” at Vienna, “Fanciulla” with Olivero at Verona, “Tosca” with Olivero and “Fanciulla” with Frazzoni at Caracalla, the recordings of “Norma” with Callas and Christa Ludwig at Milan, “Pagliacci” with Amara and Gobbi, a debut at Lausanne in “Turandot” and, on 7 December, another opening night at La Scala. “Poliuto” had been chosen to reintroduce Maria Callas to her most faithful audience and expectations were enormous. Bastianini and Corelli were engaged to round out the ensemble and on the evening of the first performance the ovations were of a magnitude that have rarely been heard. Corelli was in stupendous voice, as was Bastianini. Callas was in clear distress through most of the evening, but in the final scene she pulled out all the stops and her voice rode over the orchestra, chorus and soloists with a great deal of her previous command. It was known that Maria was extraordinarily nervous and that both Franco and Ettore had been uncommonly generous and kind in working through her many problems during weeks of rehearsal. The tension of this most important event was now behind Franco, and he prepared for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
In a performance commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Verdi, Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli debuted at the Met in “Il Trovatore” on 27 January, 1961. It was an unprecedented triumph for both singers and the occasion was reported on the front page of most of New York’s newspapers. The author attended the third performance on 8 February, and it remains a very special memory. I believed, and still do, that Price displayed the most gorgeous natural sound I ever heard and that Corelli was an instinctively thrilling performer whose physical appearance was matched by a clarion, trumpet like instrument. On 4 March, Franco appeared in a new production of “Turandot” with Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo. Leopold Stokowski, who was making his Met debut, received an extraordinary ovation as he mounted the podium for the first time. The opera had not been seen at the Met since the days of Maria Jeritza, and every performance was sold out within hours. His first season in New York ended with two performances of “Don Carlo”. The Met toured with Franco to Cleveland, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit and Toronto, Canada and at every stop there were standing ovations. America was in love, and Franco returned the compliment. Over the course of the next twenty years, Franco Corelli would call his artistic center the Metropolitan Opera and New York his home.
In June the Corelli’s returned to Italy where Franco appeared in “Andrea Chenier” at Venice and in “Carmen” at the Verona Arena. After “Trovatore” at Berlin, Franco made a hugely heralded debut at Barcelona in “Tosca”. The power of his voice was particularly admired by critics who expressed enormous surprise at his artistic phrasing. On 7 December Franco opened the Scala season with Stella and Bastianini in “La Battaglia di Legnano”, a commemoration of the centenary of Italian unification. It was another triumph and, as with so many of his performances, it has been released on CD. The principals are all in peak form, and the opera, though not consistently first rate, has many wonderful pages, including a very thrilling finale.
After a debut at Nice in “Tosca” at the beginning of 1962, Franco returned to Naples for “Turandot”, and on the 27th, he sang his season premiere at the Met. “Tosca” was performed on five evenings with five different divas: Margherita Roberti, Nilsson, Milanov, Licia Albanese and Leontyne Price. On 16 February, Franco sang Radames to the Aida of Leonie Rysanek who was in the middle of the worst vocal crisis in her long and illustrious career. The story is told that Franco was very apprehensive about the performance and appealed to his good friend, Carlo Bergonzi, for advice. Bergonzi is quoted as having said “stand as far away from her as possible”. And he did! His Met season continued with “Turandot” and in April he traveled to Philadelphia for “Carmen” with Marilyn Horne and Colzani.
In May, Corelli returned to La Scala for “Turandot” and on the 28th, he sang in the premiere of the legendary production of “Gli Ugonotti” with Joan Sutherland, Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Giorgio Tozzi and Vladimiro Ganzarolli. The performance is well known to record collectors and is considered by many to be in the grand line of great bel canto evenings. To hear the great Raoul Valentine duet is to hear singing of a defining character, in the author’s opinion. Simionato matches Franco note for note, and the higher it goes, the more thrilling it becomes. This scene, as well as the whole opera, is truncated, but that which remains is music making without which we would all be the poorer.
Where does one go from here? Well, if your name is Franco Corelli, you go to Salzburg and you bring new audiences to their feet when you perform in “Il Trovatore” with L. Price, Simionato and Bastianini under the guidance of Herbert von Karajan. This performance is nigh unto perfection. There are no standouts; they are all in absolute peak form, never to be eclipsed, and the sound on current transfers, released by DGG, is of almost studio quality. Franco’s fame and appeal were now at their apex and very few hurdles remained. A Met opening night was one of the few!
After performances of “Tosca” at Vienna with Leontyne Price, Franco and Loretta flew to New York to open the season at the Met. On 15 October Franco, Eileen Farrell and Robert Merrill sang in “Andrea Chenier”. It was a grand evening of truly stentorian vocalism, attended by the author who was experiencing his first Met opener. The final duet had a large portion of the audience on its feet even as the curtain fell
from "Can't Help Singing”, Eileen Farrell
"The performances of Chenier were pretty wild, though. Corelli was at the peak of his form, but he had the worst stage fright I'd ever seen. He would show up for rehearsal and sing beautifully, then all of a sudden he'd throw up his hands and say that he was in terrible voice and couldn't go on. Singing seemed to be agony for him, and once the run begun, I started to see why he was such a wreck. At intermission, his wife Loretta would barricade herself in his dressing room and scream at him, telling everything he'd done wrong. She didn't shut up even when we were on stage. It got so that I would try to avoid going to extreme stage left or right, no matter what the blocking called for, because Signora Corelli was always in the wings, yelling at her husband in Italian and I'd have to concentrate like crazy to stay on track.”
These tantrums were to continue as a regular part of Corelli performances and the uproars could at times be heard in the front of the orchestra. Franco’s season continued with “Ernani” and “Aida” in November, followed by another opening night at La Scala, Trovatore with Stella, Cossotto and Bastianini. On 21 January, 1963, Franco and Renata Tebaldi appeared in a benefit performance of a new production of “Adriana Lecouvrer”. Corelli was in stupendous form, but it was obvious that Tebaldi was in some vocal difficulty. Her legions of admirers took every opportunity to salute her, but reviews were not kind, and before the season was over, she decided to leave the stage for a period of rest and study. Franco sang in a special Sunday evening performance of “Turandot” with Nilsson and Albanese before returning to Rome, and then Monte Carlo in “Il Trovatore. In late April, Franco sang in a single performance of “Adriana” at the Met and then he toured with the company in “Tosca”, “Pagliacci” and “Cavalleria Rusticana”.
The autumn was spent in Vienna where he sang Turiddu, Don Carlo, Manrico and Don Jose. On 7 December, he opened La Scala for the third successive year in “Cavalleria” with Simionato. It was on a double bill with “L’Amico Fritz” starring Mirella Freni and is another of his many recorded live appearances. The tension is white hot, and the confrontation between Santuzza and Turiddu has never been more thrillingly exposed.
After five performances of “Fanciulla” at Scala, Franco returned to the Met where he spent the rest of the winter. There were certainly trouble signs when he sang in “Il Trovatore”. His attention to dynamics was markedly sluggish, tempi were ignored at his pleasure and he left out bars of music at a stretched when preparing for a top note. It was especially distressing in the “Pira” scene where there was not even an attempt to mouth the sequences preceding “Alarmi”. Very loud boos were heard on more than one occasion, though they were always drowned out by thunderous ovations.
On 7 March, the Met broadcast “Don Carlo” with Leonie Rysanek, Irene Dalis, Franco, Nicolai Herlea, whose debut it was, Giorgio Tozzi and Hermann Uhde. The Auto da Fe scene had begun to unfold as Rysanek uttered the phrase “Qui Carlo! O Ciel”, but Carlo was no where to be seen. Kurt Adler nervously kept a quiet beat while the cast stared into space, trying not to make eye contact with each other. Those in the audience who knew the opera did look at each other in bewilderment as the seconds turned into what seemed an eternity. Corelli sauntered onto the stage in his own good time, without acknowledgment, and the performance continued. Loretta had staged another of her infamous performances and Franco had ignored all pleas to “get out there” until they had finished their mutual exchanges. It must be said, that though she was brutal to him at times, and never let the slightest flaw pass without a tirade, Loretta was frantically defensive and supportive of him in the public arena and missed no opportunity to praise him, even when things had not gone so well.
Franco spent the rest of the season at the Met and toured with the company until the middle of May. On 3 June he sang in “Tosca” at the Paris Opera and on the 6th, he, Callas and Cossotto appeared in a most controversial production of “Norma”. Some thought that Callas was at the very end of her tether while others found a new sensitivity and artistry in the vocalism that transcended whatever vocal insecurities there may have been. There were fistfights in the auditorium among various factions and it was during this run that Rudolf Bing approached Maria with an overture of reconciliation and a return engagement to the Met. Franco concluded his season at Paris with “Don Carlo” and in October, after recording “Il Trovatore”, he sang Manrico and Don Jose at Chicago. He sang in “Fanciulla del West” with Dorothy Kirsten and Colzani at Philadelphi on 10 November, a performance attended by the author and remembered as the finest he has ever experienced. The pacing and interaction among all three were remarkable and the vocalism was superb. On 7 December Franco opened the Scala season for the fourth successive year, this time in Turandot with Nilsson and Galina Vishnevskaya.
The 1965 season at the Met included performances of “La Forza del Destino” in which Bastianini was seen at that theater for the first time in five years. Only much later did the world learn that the great baritone was severely ill with cancer and that Corelli played a not insignificant role and providing engagements for it as the end approached. Franco would be a constant source of comfort for his dear friend. Yes, he is a compassionate and generous man, much kinder to those around him than to himself.
On 19 March, the Metropolitan Opera House witnessed an eruption that was probably unique in its long and fabled history. Maria Callas walked through the wings into the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle to absolute hysterics. The ovation seemed to last forever and is certainly the most intense moment that the author has ever witnessed in a theater. Corelli and Gobbi completed the magnificent trio and it remains among the most famous evenings in the history of opera. Callas’ voice did betray her at several points, most horribly on the top C in “Io quella lama”, but her every movement, her every gesture, every phrase were things of perfection and Franco was spectacular both in physical appearance and in vocal splendor. It was to be the last time that Maria and Franco would appear together.
The Corelli’s now lived in New York and Franco spent little time away from the United States during the remainder of his career. In the autumn of 1965, he appeared with the Philadelphia Opera in “Turandot” with the Chicago Lyric in “La Boheme” and with the San Francisco Opera in “Tosca”. At the Met he joined the unbeatable Kirsten and Colzani in another triumphant “Fanciulla”, and on 17 January, he abandoned the stage after act one when Eleanor Steber attempted the role of Minnie to a barrage of laughter and general ridicule from a highly expectant audience. She was completely unprepared and was seen to read lines that were pasted to furniture. She hadn’t a clue as to where she was supposed to be at any given moment and she had difficulty finding props and musical entrances. It was a painful farewell for one who had been among the company’s brightest lights for so many years. Franco pled illness and the performance was completed by Gaetano Bardini.
The Old Met closed out its history at 39th Street on 16 April and Franco joined Tebaldi in the great second act duet from “Manon Lescaut” to huge applause. Shortly after the new house opened at Lincoln Center in October, Franco appeared in “La Gioconda” with Tebaldi, Biserka Cvejic, Mignon Dunn, Cornell Macneil and Siepi. It was an enormous popular success and tickets were impossible to find for any of the nine performances.
Franco spent the winter of 1967 in Europe, with appearances as Alvaro at Florence, Cavaradossi at Parma and Andrea Chenier at Lisbon. He rejoined the Met in late March and spent the spring on the company’s annual tour. On 19 September he joined the delectable Mirella Freni in a new production of “Romeo et Juliette” and it was controversial, to say the least. There was no question that the Met’s stage had never seen two such beautiful looking lovers, but about the vocalism and the style there was much negative commentary. Franco’s diction was never his strong suit, and the incipient lisp, which is in reality more the product of his dialect than of an impediment, was not a thing of beauty in the French language. Freni sounded lovely most of the time, but her fioratura was approximate at best. Nevertheless, it was a box office smash and tickets were very difficult to find. Franco later sang in productions of the Gounod work at Philadelphia and Seattle. In November he sang in the Manzoni Requiem at Los Angeles and he ended the year with “La Forza del Destino” at Parma.
In February 1968 he partnered Crespin, and later Rysanek in “Tosca” at the Met. The performance with Leonie recalls intensity, brillance and drama that have rarely been experienced by the author. Their top registers in the third act seemed to come from some inexhaustible reservoir and it drew an enormous reaction from a mesmerized audience. Franco was now giving a fair number of concerts, including one with Montserrat Caballe at New York’s Philharmonic Hall that lives on CD. He is in amazing shape as is she, especially in the final duet from “Chenier”. There are also strong contributions by Bonaldo Giaiotti. At the Met, Franco sang in “Tosca” with Tebaldi before again joining the annual tour. On the evening of 16 Setptember Corelli and Tebaldi opened the Met season in “Adriana Lecouvreur”. Callas was in the audience, the guest of Rudolf Bing, and at the end, she and Renata enjoyed a private meeting backstage. In December, Franco and Loretta returned to Europe for “Tosca” at Nice with Suzanne Sarocca.
Our hero was starting to pace himself more carefully and he did not appear on a stage again until 4 April 1969 when he sang at the Met in “La Boheme”. After a performance of “Adriana” with Tebaldi on the 19th he again toured with the Company. He returned to New York for performances of “Boheme” and “Tosca” during the Met’s June season and then took a six month vacation.
In 1970 Franco sang his usual compliment of roles at the Met and appeared as well at Paris in “Tosca”, at Macerata in “Turandot”, at Verona in “Carmen”, and at Vienna in “Don Carlo” with Janowitz, Verrett, Eberhard Waechter and Ghiaurov, a performance that is known from its several CD incarnations. In December he appeared at Belgrade in “Carmen” and “Boheme” and then returned to New York for an intense Met season. “Ernani”, a very poor “Lucia di Lammermoor”, “Andrea Chenier”, “Boheme” and “Werther”, whose premiere had been cancelled by Franco at the last possible moment, rounded out his Met season and he again toured throughout the spring, adding performances of “Aida” along the way. There was no question that his voice was showing a lot of stress around the edges. Franco’s sense of self was suffering the consequences. It was a regular routine to hear him say that he was going to quit the stage, though that, in fact, would not happen for a few more years.
In the autumn, Franco toured to Tokyo and Seoul in a number of recitals and the year ended at Parma in “Norma” with Cristina Deutekom. On 21 January 1972 Franco returned to the Met for “Forza del Destino” and he stayed with the company until July, when he traveled to Verona for “Ernani” and “Aida”. With the exception of two appearances at Lisbon and a concert in London, Franco’s career was now pretty much limited to the United States. Very late in 1973 he sang a single concert in Vienna, Austria and then returned to the Far East for a second concert tour. There were no new roles and no new cities. Franco’s reviews were increasingly compromised and his appearances became increasingly infrequent. In 1975 he restricted himself to two roles in America, Romeo and Rodolfo, and did not appear at the Met, though he did join the tour at Boston. Late in the summer, he sang in “Carmen” and “Turandot” at the Verona Arena, and then disappeared for over a year. Fittingly, he sang his opera farewell in Italy, at Torre del Lago on 10 August 1976. The role was Rodolfo and Adriana Maliponte was his Mimi.
Retirement was not easy for Corelli and there were persistent rumors for several years that he was planning to sing “Otello” though that never happened. He and Loretta continued to live in New York and Franco was often seen enjoying the city. In June of 1980 he gave a recital at Newark and the following year he returned to New Jersey for two additional concerts. His voice had collapsed and there was little to offer. He understood that and decided that it was truly time, even while being pressured by some fans and several impressarios to return to the concert stage. Though he and Loretta now live in Italy, he does visit New York from time to time and has spent evenings at Café Taci on the upper West Side of Manhattan with friends and fans who always seem to know when he will be there.
His was the most heroic tenor sound I ever experienced and his physical presence was certainly the most impressive. When he was in his element, there was no singer who could thrill in quite the same way, and his great evenings remain among my fondest memories.
© Bob Rideout
I’ll begin with his birth. Is it simply a conceit that his birthdate is not even noted in his one official biography, or was it an oversight? From “Franco Corelli, Un uomo, Una Voce” by Marina Boagno. “Era una bella notte di primavera…..”. It was a beautiful spring night. The chapter goes on to say that “it is probable that it was a beautiful spring night in which Franco Corelli was born at Ancona… That is a remarkable entry since Corelli was involved with the production of the book. The only place that I have found a date is in Kutsch-Riemens, which is often incorrect, and there it is given as 8 April 1921. Perhaps!
Franco avoided serious musical studies and was, as has been said, almost completely self taught, though he did rely on friends who studied at conservatories to relay to him that which they had learned. He would then imitate their instructions and submit himself to their criticism. It was at Spoleto that he debuted after receiving help from Maestro Ottavio Ziino and others connected to musical establishments at Rome and at the “experimental” facility of Spoleto. He debuted in the role of Don Jose on 26 August 1951 with Lucia Daniele as the Gypsy seductress. It was a roaring success, and he was declared to have a voice of extraordinary range and power. However, he did not have immediate engagements, and it took some persuading to convince the management of Rome’s Teatro del Opera that they should take a chance on the unknown tenor. On 31 January 1952, he was presented in Zandonai’s “Giulietta e Romeo” with Merces Fortunati. His mentor and friend, Ziino was on the podium, and Franco sang three performances to excellent reviews. After a hiatus of four months he returned to Rome for a single performance of “Adriana Lecouvrer” with Maria Caniglia, Maria Benedetti and Tito Gobbi and it was this revival that drew the comment, “He was worth the risk”, from the Opera’s general manager. Franco was retained for performances of “Carmen” during the company’s summer season at Caracalla. On 12 July, he appeared as Don Jose with Pia Tassinari as the protagonista. After four hugely successful performances, he traveled to Trieste’s Castello di San Giusto for another debut in the Bizet opera, this time with Giulietta Simionato. In August he repeated his success at Sanremo and in October at Turin, again with Simionato.
Rome determined that Franco was going to be a major force in its ensemble and on 14 December he sang in “Boris Godunov” with Boris Christoff. Theirs was to be a very stormy collaboration, terminating in a frightening incident at Rome in 1958, after which they never appeared together again.
After a debut in “Carmen” at Palermo’s Massimo on 20 February 1953, Corelli returned to Rome on 11 March for the World Premiere of Guerrini’s “Enea” with Antonietta Stella and Christoff. The performance was well reviewed but the opera was poorly received and was dropped after two performances. On 9 April, Franco sang with Maria Meneghini Callas for the first time, when, at Rome they appeared together in “Norma”. The revival and all of its participants, Fedora Barbieri, Giulio Neri and Gabriele Santini, received splendid reviews and enormous receptions in the theater.
Following additional performances of “Carmen” at Rome, Corelli debuted at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino on 26 May in the first Italian production of Prokofiev’s “War and Peace” (“Guerra e Pace”, as it was performed). The huge cast of Rosanna Carteri, Barbieri, Cesy Broggini, Mirto Picchi, Ettore Bastianini, Anselmo Colzani, Renato Capecchi, Italo Tajo and Fernando Corena were recalled to the proscenium countless times and the production enjoyed four performances. Franco had been wise enough to vary his repertoire, to seek and get prestigious engagements of little known, or unknown works, and it was these productions that first brought to him national and international attention. Franco Corelli was one of Italy’s magnet attractions after fewer than two years on the lyric stage.
On 2 July, Franco sang the role of Canio for the first time when he returned to Caracalla. Claral Petrella and Aldo Protti joined him in one of his very few revivals of that role during a thirty year career. The rest of the summer was occupied with Don Jose at Bolzano, Enna and Naples’ Arena Flegrea, and in September he returned to Spoleto for a single performance of “ Pagliacci”. At Ravenna he appeared first in”Carmen”, then in a stellar revival of “Aida” with Caterina Mancini, Elena Nicolai, Protti and Neri. Franco debuted at Trieste’s Teatro Verdi as Pollione to the Norma of Callas on 19 November. Nicolai and Christoff completed the impressive cast and there were four hugely praised and sold out performances. The year ended at Naples, where, on 19 December, Franco debuted at the San Carlo in “Carmen” with Simionato, Sena Jurinac and Ugo Savarese.
1954 began at Modena with “Norma” and on the 9th he brought his portrayal to Parma with Mancini, Nicolai and Guglielmo Ferrara. At the end of the month he returned to Rome for Allegra's "Romulus” with Elizabetta Barbato and his season there continued into March with “Don Carlo”. He, Mancini, Nicolai, Gobbi, Christoff and Neri appeared four times to enormous critical and popular receptions. Franco concluded his Rome season with four performances of Gluck’s “Ifigenia in Aulide” with Marcella Pobbe and Christoff. Corelli had impressed everyone with his facility in an amazingly diverse range of operatic styles, and because of this flexibility he appeared at Florence on 4 May in the Italian premiere of Spontini’s “Agnese di Hohenstaufen” with Lucille Udovick, Dorothy Dow, Enzo Mascherini and Anselmo Colzani. Again, Franco was not only received with great respect but with genuine enthusiasm. It might be noted, in light of later events, that he was regarded as a singer whose musicianship was fairly beyond criticism during this early period on the lyric stages of Italy.
The summer was spent at a number of Italian cities in “Tosca” and “Carmen”, with a particularly successful appearance as Don Jose at Caracalla in August. In late September Corelli recorded “Pagliacci” for RAI of Milan and in the early autumn he appeared in “Carmen” at Bologna and Rovigo before taking a month’s vacation to prepare for his debut at La Scala. Hard work and collegiality were Franco’s benchmarks for success and they had certainly paid off. Maria Callas, who had a definite say in casting decisions for her productions at Scala, was delighted to learn that Franco would join her for the opening night in Spontini’s “La Vestale”.
On 7 December, they, along with Ebe Stignani, Rossi Lemeni, and Luchino Visconti, the “producer”, enjoyed one of the great triumphs in the theater’s long history. Antonino Votto shared in the adulation after he led his orchestra through a broadly conceived reading, in which each singer was afforded the latitude of individual expression while maintaining the cohesive balance that was so necessary to make this nearly unknown opera, with so many marvelous pages, take wing. There were five hysterically received performances. Somehow, Franco found both the strength and the time to appear in “Norma” at Piacenza with Mancini before year’s end. Where would this heady success end, Franco wondered, as he would until the end of his career. Corelli was a worrier, they said, and his reputation as a pacer with a wild eyed drive for perfection was growing. Years later, Callas remembered that Corelli’s kindness to her at the time of “Poliuto” was in part a remembrance of her own solicitations of him at the time of his Scala debut, and, as we shall later learn, in other collaborations.
Arianna Stassinopoulos, in her very controversial book, “Maria Callas, The Woman behind the Legend”, declares: “She even began to be jealous of Franco Corelli, the young tenor making his first Scala appearance, persuading herself that Visconti (who was openly gay) was attracted to him”. Stassinopoulos continues “She (Callas) hated Corelli because he was handsome. It made her nervous - she was wary of beautiful people”. To comment would be both unwise and unfair since I was a young man trying to learn Algebra when these events burst upon the World, but, it should be noted that neither of the “antagonists” ever had a mean word to say about the other. I’ll return to this discussion when we review “Fedora” at La Scala.
Franco sang in “La Fanciulla del West” for the first time at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice on 26 January 1955. Elisabetta Barbato and Gian Giacomo Guelfi fought over the life of the cowboy outlaw for four performances. In February he sang in “Norma” with Mancini and in March, Corelli sang in “Tosca” at Catania’s Teatro Masimo Bellini with Adriana Gurerini and Giuseppi Taddei. It should be noted at this point that the chronicle will not include every engagement, since there were so many as to bore the greatest Corelli fan. I will limit the commentary to new venues, new roles and major casting changes. On 29 April Franco debuted at the Teatro Sao Carlo of Lisbon in Carmen with Simionato, Pobbe and Colzani and upon his return to Italy, he appeared at Ravenna’s Teatro Alighieri in “Norma” with Mancini. Stignani and Uo Novelli. At the Boboli Gardens, on 26 June Corelli joined Anita Cerquetti in the first “Normas” of her career, and after singing six performances to ecstatic audiences, he sang an additional performance with Lucy Kelston. His summer engagements included “Norma” at Caracalla and a debut at the Verona Arena where he first sang in “Carmen” with Simionato and later in “Aida” with Antonietta Stella, Adriana Lazzarini and Protti. In August, at Messina, he sang Radames to the Aida of Cerquetti and in October he, Caniglia and G. Guelfi joined forces in “Tosca” at Turin. The year moved along in its enormously impressive stride with “Aida” at Catania and Naples, “Fanciulla del West” at Trieste and a new production of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” at the Rome Opera. The four performances of the Handel work were a watershed experience for Corelli, who sang the role of Sesto; his reviews were superb, his physical presence was overwhelming and it was the subject of enormous discussion in the Italian press.
In February 1956, Franco returned to Venice for “Carmen” with Simionato, the very young Renata Scotto and G.Guelfi and after four wildly cheered performances he appeared with Cerquetti, Lazzarini and Guelfi in “Aida”. On 4 April, Corelli sang in “Fanciulla del West” at La Scala in a performance that has been released many times on both LP and CD. It remains the author’s favorite memento of the opera; Gigliola Frazzoni and Tito Gobbi are in top form, even if overwrought, and Franco’s voice was never heard to greater effect. The tension in act two is an amazing dramatic achievement and the vocalism is beyond criticism.
In late April he returned to Lisbon for “Giulietta e Romeo” and on 21 May he and Maria Callas joined forces in an epic, legendary, and elusive revival of Giordano’s “Fedora”. It has been rumored for some forty years that the Corelli’s have a copy of that tape. I fancy that if that were true, it would have surfaced by now. But, anything is possible. In any case, it is one of the few Callas revivals at La Scala that is not documented in sound. Corelli on Callas: “No one can imagine what it meant to me, a virtual beginner on the stage, only in my second year at La Scala, to work with Callas. I learned so much….Maria was extremely thoughtful with me and tried to make everything easy. And she did. She herself was so involved in the opera that she involved me too. I felt it a duty to respond, to work deeply, as never before, in a way I did not fully comprehend but which I strongly sensed” - Maria Callas, the woman behind the Legend. The admiration that Corelli felt for Callas and that which she manifested to him will be reviewed in a number of additional revivals that joined their unique talents; they are among the most important operatic events in the second half of this century. Mary Curtis Verna, a soprano of some repute who had a not insignificant career at the Met, attended the premiere with her husband, a noted musicologist and conductor. “The performance was likely the most thrilling event of my operatic life as an observer. One cannot imagine the chemistry of that evening unless he were to have been in the audience”. (paraphrased).
In August he returned to Verona for “Tosca” with Frazzoni and Gobbi, a trio that was gaining a wide reputation in Italy as a truly potent combination. There were four sold out and wildly applauded performances. In the autumn Franco sang in Adria in “Tosca” and at Trieste in “Aida”. He took a long breath and then returned to La Scala for his second production of “Giulio Cesare” which was premiered on 10 December. The cast was truly starry: Virginia Zeani, Simionato, Rossi Lemeni and Mario Petri with Gianandrea Gavazzeni on the podium. There were four performances, all received with rapture from audiences who were mostly unfamiliar with the opera, as had been the case in Rome. Again, Franco made headlines, as much for his physical presence as for his singing. He ended the year at Scala in “Aida” with Stella, Simionato, Dino Dondi and Nicola Zaccaria. Di Stefano was in crisis, Del Monaco held sway in two roles, “Otello” and occasional revivals of “Ernani”, but there was no question that Franco Corelli was now Italy’s leading lyrico spinto tenor, and would soon be its most important ambassador around the World.
1957 began at La Scala in “Pagliacci”, and at the end of January, Franco appeared in “Aida” at Rome with Cerquetti, Simionato, G.Guelfi and Neri. “La Fanciulla del West” was revived at Naples in February with Maria Caniglia and in March the San Carlo presented “Andrea Chenier” an opera repeated at Palermo two weeks later. Franco sang Chenier at Lisbon with Frazzoni and Gobbi and then returned to Palermo for “Don Carlo” with Cerquetti, Lazzarini, Enzo Mascherini and and Bernar Ladysz.
Enter Loretta Di Lelio. At Palermo, Franco’s bride to be appeared as Tebaldo in the Don Carlo production. Loretta is the daughter of one of Italy’s most important bassos in this century. Umberto Di Lelio had an international career and appeared repeatedly in every Italian theater. He specialized in buffo roles, but had considerable success in the Verdi repertoire. Loretta received extensive musical training before debuting at Rome in 1941. She sang a large number of comprimario roles including Flora in “Traviata”, Inez in “Trovatore” and Kate Pinkerton and appeared at several Italian operatic centers. There is no documentation on the date of their marriage but it likely occurred late in 1957. In any case, Loretta’s name is indelibly printed upon the professional career of Franco Corelli, and there were repeated instances of stormy scenes both in private and on the backstages of the world. The marriage has survived very well, thank you, and they are enjoying a very tranquil retirement together, as we shall later see.
In May Franco sang in “Khovanscina” at Lisbon with Christoff and then traveled to Madrid for “Tosca”. On 15 May, Corelli debuted at the Vienna Staatsoper as Radames with Stella, Simionato, Protti and Nicola Zaccaria after which he returned once again to Lisbon, this time for Simon Boccanegra with Pobbe, Gobbi and Christoff. At Enghien les Bains (listed in Cerquetti’s chronology as in Belgium and in Corelli’s as in France) he sang in “Norma” with Floriana Cavalli and on 27 June, Franco debuted at London’s Covent Garden in “Tosca” with Zinka Milanov and G. Guelfi. It was a greatly anticipated event, but the revival did not go down very well with either audiences or critics and London was not to be a regular stop on Franco’s schedule. He happily returned to Italy where, at the Verona Arena he sang in “Norma” with Cerquetti, Simionato and Neri to enormous receptions for all. The arena also presented him in five performances of “Carmen”. The summer season concluded at the Terme di Caracalla with “Carmen”, “Andrea Chenier”, “Tosca” and “Aida” and the autumn found him at Bilbao and Oviedo Spain in several of his standard roles, and a rare appearance in “Fedora” at Oviedo’s Teatro Campoamor. After performances of “Fanciulla” at Livorno and “Chenier” at Bergamo, Franco traveled to Rome for a gala opening night performance of “Norma” with Callas. O don fatale!
On 2 January, with Italy’s President, Giovanni Gronchi, in the audience, “Norma” opened the opera season at Rome. An hour later, that season came to a grinding halt when Maria Callas left the theater, claiming illness. Corelli, Miriam Pirazzini, Giulio Neri and Gabriele Santini were informed that the performance would not continue, and the theater was darkened. Most of Italy, especially the press, saw the cancellation as an insult to the president and the nation. Callas was informed that her services were no longer needed, and two nights later Anita Cerquetti appeared on the stage of the Teatro del Opera. The applause was quite unlike anything encountered in a generation. She alternated performances between Rome and Naples, where her season had begun, while most of the World drank up every sordid detail of the “scandal”. Among the singers who stood in Maria’s defense when it became apparent that only litigation would resolve her problem were Simionato and Corelli, both of whom spoke eloquently and with passion about the “Diva’s” integrity as a colleague and as an artist. Callas won the decision and there was an “amicable” settlement. Franco thought he had seen it all!
Three weeks later, during rehearsals for “Don Carlo”, Christoff, who was broiling with anger over Corelli’s perceived indifference to the dramatic situation in the “Auto da Fe”, hurled his sword with intent upon that of his “son” and it was clear to most onlookers that a most dangerous situation had been precipitated. Tito Gobbi stepped between the two at his own peril, but it did end the confrontation. Santini attempted to intervene, but Christoff resisted all attempts to affect a reconciliation between the two. The great but temperamental bass stormed out of the theater and informed Santini later in the day that he would not appear in the production. Mario Petri replaced him, to the disappointment of thousands of patrons who had already sold out the performance. Stella, Neri, and Mancini, who was singing Eboli for the first time, completed the cast. Despite the interruption, the revival was a huge success.
On 6 February Franco appeared at Palermo in “Fanciulla” with Magda Olivero, and they were hailed as defining and unique in their collaboration. “Norma” followed with Cerquetti, Simionato and Modesti. Loretta sang the role of Clotilde. Serafin conducted four truly triumphant performances. So enormous were the receptions that the lights had to be turned off every night so that the theater might be cleared. At Naples, Franco sang with Tebaldi in “Tosca” and later. in a documented performance of “Forza del Destino” with Tebaldi, Oralia Domiguez, Bastianini, and Christoff. Many who have heard it consider it the finest exposition of the opera that they have experienced.
On 19 May Corelli appeared with Callas and Bastianini in “Il Pirata” at La Scala. Callas had already been informed by Ghiringelli that her services would no longer be needed, invoking the Rome scandal, along with a very tenuous accusation about her “cancellation” of one performance of “La Sonnambula” at Edinburgh the previous summer as his excuses. At the last of the five performances, Maria pointed to the box in which the director was seated, and on the words “Palco funesto” stretched her arm directly into his face from the footlights. “Palco” means, among other things, opera box. It brought a huge demonstration from a very partisan Callas audience. The evening ended in chaotic demonstrations for all the participants and it is said that Antonino Votto was perspiring so severely that he had difficulty finding the strength to come to the proscenium for curtain calls.
When Maria Callas next appeared at La Scala it would be with Franco Corelli and Ettore Bastianini. That was not to happen for some two and a half years, and when it did…..
Corelli toured to Wiesbaden, Stuttgart and Munich in “Tosca” in June and in July he again appeared at Caracalla in “Pagliacci” and “Aida”. At Verona he sang in “Turandot” and for the first time with Leontyne Price when they appeared in “Aida”. After additional performances of “Turandot” and “Tosca” at Caracalla, Franco sang in “Tosca” at Bergamo and in “Trovatore” at Bologna. On 29 November, the San Carlo of Naples presented “Andrea Chenier” with Stella and Bastianini, and on 17 December, Corelli returned to La Scala for “Turandot” with Birgit Nilsson and Rosanna Carteri. The year ended at Scala with the Italian premiere of Handle’s “Hercules” with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Barbieri, Bastianini and Jerome Hines.
1959 was an enormously busy time for Franco. Parma saw him in “Turandot”, Palermo hosted him in “Turandot” and “Carmen”, Scala presented “Ernani” with Margherita Roberti, Bastianini and Rossi Lemeni, Lisbon’s Sao Carlo mounted “Turandot” with Inge Borkh and “Trovatore” with Regine Crespin, Genoa revived “Trovatore” with Leyla Gencer, Barbieri and Colzani, and at La Scala on 9 April, “Carmen” was revived with Simionato. After additional performance of “Trovatore” and a gala concert at Milan, Franco returned to Verona and Caracalla for “Trovatore”. Bilbao mounted productions of “Trovatore”, “Aida” and “Turandot” and at Livorno he sang in “Tosca” with Tebaldi and Colzani. On 29 November Franco appeared with Magda Olivero, Simionato and Bastianini in the celebrated revival of “Adriana Lecouvrer” at Naples. The evening was an overwhelming success for all the participants, and it is among the author’s most treasured performances. Olivero had been persuaded on two days notice to replace Tebaldi, whose indisposition was apparent during the final dress rehearsal. The eruption that attended Magda’s first solo curtain call has been termed the most emotional in the history of the theater by various commentators. On 22 December Franco returned to Bologna for “Andrea Chenier” and so his year ended.
The litany of triumphs continued throughout 1960, “Chenier” “Turandot” and “Carmen” at La Scala, “Trovatore” at Naples, a debut at Monte Carlo in “Turandot”, “Forza del Destino” and “”Turandot” at Venice, “Chenier” at Vienna, “Fanciulla” with Olivero at Verona, “Tosca” with Olivero and “Fanciulla” with Frazzoni at Caracalla, the recordings of “Norma” with Callas and Christa Ludwig at Milan, “Pagliacci” with Amara and Gobbi, a debut at Lausanne in “Turandot” and, on 7 December, another opening night at La Scala. “Poliuto” had been chosen to reintroduce Maria Callas to her most faithful audience and expectations were enormous. Bastianini and Corelli were engaged to round out the ensemble and on the evening of the first performance the ovations were of a magnitude that have rarely been heard. Corelli was in stupendous voice, as was Bastianini. Callas was in clear distress through most of the evening, but in the final scene she pulled out all the stops and her voice rode over the orchestra, chorus and soloists with a great deal of her previous command. It was known that Maria was extraordinarily nervous and that both Franco and Ettore had been uncommonly generous and kind in working through her many problems during weeks of rehearsal. The tension of this most important event was now behind Franco, and he prepared for his debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
In a performance commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Giuseppe Verdi, Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli debuted at the Met in “Il Trovatore” on 27 January, 1961. It was an unprecedented triumph for both singers and the occasion was reported on the front page of most of New York’s newspapers. The author attended the third performance on 8 February, and it remains a very special memory. I believed, and still do, that Price displayed the most gorgeous natural sound I ever heard and that Corelli was an instinctively thrilling performer whose physical appearance was matched by a clarion, trumpet like instrument. On 4 March, Franco appeared in a new production of “Turandot” with Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo. Leopold Stokowski, who was making his Met debut, received an extraordinary ovation as he mounted the podium for the first time. The opera had not been seen at the Met since the days of Maria Jeritza, and every performance was sold out within hours. His first season in New York ended with two performances of “Don Carlo”. The Met toured with Franco to Cleveland, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit and Toronto, Canada and at every stop there were standing ovations. America was in love, and Franco returned the compliment. Over the course of the next twenty years, Franco Corelli would call his artistic center the Metropolitan Opera and New York his home.
In June the Corelli’s returned to Italy where Franco appeared in “Andrea Chenier” at Venice and in “Carmen” at the Verona Arena. After “Trovatore” at Berlin, Franco made a hugely heralded debut at Barcelona in “Tosca”. The power of his voice was particularly admired by critics who expressed enormous surprise at his artistic phrasing. On 7 December Franco opened the Scala season with Stella and Bastianini in “La Battaglia di Legnano”, a commemoration of the centenary of Italian unification. It was another triumph and, as with so many of his performances, it has been released on CD. The principals are all in peak form, and the opera, though not consistently first rate, has many wonderful pages, including a very thrilling finale.
After a debut at Nice in “Tosca” at the beginning of 1962, Franco returned to Naples for “Turandot”, and on the 27th, he sang his season premiere at the Met. “Tosca” was performed on five evenings with five different divas: Margherita Roberti, Nilsson, Milanov, Licia Albanese and Leontyne Price. On 16 February, Franco sang Radames to the Aida of Leonie Rysanek who was in the middle of the worst vocal crisis in her long and illustrious career. The story is told that Franco was very apprehensive about the performance and appealed to his good friend, Carlo Bergonzi, for advice. Bergonzi is quoted as having said “stand as far away from her as possible”. And he did! His Met season continued with “Turandot” and in April he traveled to Philadelphia for “Carmen” with Marilyn Horne and Colzani.
In May, Corelli returned to La Scala for “Turandot” and on the 28th, he sang in the premiere of the legendary production of “Gli Ugonotti” with Joan Sutherland, Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Giorgio Tozzi and Vladimiro Ganzarolli. The performance is well known to record collectors and is considered by many to be in the grand line of great bel canto evenings. To hear the great Raoul Valentine duet is to hear singing of a defining character, in the author’s opinion. Simionato matches Franco note for note, and the higher it goes, the more thrilling it becomes. This scene, as well as the whole opera, is truncated, but that which remains is music making without which we would all be the poorer.
Where does one go from here? Well, if your name is Franco Corelli, you go to Salzburg and you bring new audiences to their feet when you perform in “Il Trovatore” with L. Price, Simionato and Bastianini under the guidance of Herbert von Karajan. This performance is nigh unto perfection. There are no standouts; they are all in absolute peak form, never to be eclipsed, and the sound on current transfers, released by DGG, is of almost studio quality. Franco’s fame and appeal were now at their apex and very few hurdles remained. A Met opening night was one of the few!
After performances of “Tosca” at Vienna with Leontyne Price, Franco and Loretta flew to New York to open the season at the Met. On 15 October Franco, Eileen Farrell and Robert Merrill sang in “Andrea Chenier”. It was a grand evening of truly stentorian vocalism, attended by the author who was experiencing his first Met opener. The final duet had a large portion of the audience on its feet even as the curtain fell
from "Can't Help Singing”, Eileen Farrell
"The performances of Chenier were pretty wild, though. Corelli was at the peak of his form, but he had the worst stage fright I'd ever seen. He would show up for rehearsal and sing beautifully, then all of a sudden he'd throw up his hands and say that he was in terrible voice and couldn't go on. Singing seemed to be agony for him, and once the run begun, I started to see why he was such a wreck. At intermission, his wife Loretta would barricade herself in his dressing room and scream at him, telling everything he'd done wrong. She didn't shut up even when we were on stage. It got so that I would try to avoid going to extreme stage left or right, no matter what the blocking called for, because Signora Corelli was always in the wings, yelling at her husband in Italian and I'd have to concentrate like crazy to stay on track.”
These tantrums were to continue as a regular part of Corelli performances and the uproars could at times be heard in the front of the orchestra. Franco’s season continued with “Ernani” and “Aida” in November, followed by another opening night at La Scala, Trovatore with Stella, Cossotto and Bastianini. On 21 January, 1963, Franco and Renata Tebaldi appeared in a benefit performance of a new production of “Adriana Lecouvrer”. Corelli was in stupendous form, but it was obvious that Tebaldi was in some vocal difficulty. Her legions of admirers took every opportunity to salute her, but reviews were not kind, and before the season was over, she decided to leave the stage for a period of rest and study. Franco sang in a special Sunday evening performance of “Turandot” with Nilsson and Albanese before returning to Rome, and then Monte Carlo in “Il Trovatore. In late April, Franco sang in a single performance of “Adriana” at the Met and then he toured with the company in “Tosca”, “Pagliacci” and “Cavalleria Rusticana”.
The autumn was spent in Vienna where he sang Turiddu, Don Carlo, Manrico and Don Jose. On 7 December, he opened La Scala for the third successive year in “Cavalleria” with Simionato. It was on a double bill with “L’Amico Fritz” starring Mirella Freni and is another of his many recorded live appearances. The tension is white hot, and the confrontation between Santuzza and Turiddu has never been more thrillingly exposed.
After five performances of “Fanciulla” at Scala, Franco returned to the Met where he spent the rest of the winter. There were certainly trouble signs when he sang in “Il Trovatore”. His attention to dynamics was markedly sluggish, tempi were ignored at his pleasure and he left out bars of music at a stretched when preparing for a top note. It was especially distressing in the “Pira” scene where there was not even an attempt to mouth the sequences preceding “Alarmi”. Very loud boos were heard on more than one occasion, though they were always drowned out by thunderous ovations.
On 7 March, the Met broadcast “Don Carlo” with Leonie Rysanek, Irene Dalis, Franco, Nicolai Herlea, whose debut it was, Giorgio Tozzi and Hermann Uhde. The Auto da Fe scene had begun to unfold as Rysanek uttered the phrase “Qui Carlo! O Ciel”, but Carlo was no where to be seen. Kurt Adler nervously kept a quiet beat while the cast stared into space, trying not to make eye contact with each other. Those in the audience who knew the opera did look at each other in bewilderment as the seconds turned into what seemed an eternity. Corelli sauntered onto the stage in his own good time, without acknowledgment, and the performance continued. Loretta had staged another of her infamous performances and Franco had ignored all pleas to “get out there” until they had finished their mutual exchanges. It must be said, that though she was brutal to him at times, and never let the slightest flaw pass without a tirade, Loretta was frantically defensive and supportive of him in the public arena and missed no opportunity to praise him, even when things had not gone so well.
Franco spent the rest of the season at the Met and toured with the company until the middle of May. On 3 June he sang in “Tosca” at the Paris Opera and on the 6th, he, Callas and Cossotto appeared in a most controversial production of “Norma”. Some thought that Callas was at the very end of her tether while others found a new sensitivity and artistry in the vocalism that transcended whatever vocal insecurities there may have been. There were fistfights in the auditorium among various factions and it was during this run that Rudolf Bing approached Maria with an overture of reconciliation and a return engagement to the Met. Franco concluded his season at Paris with “Don Carlo” and in October, after recording “Il Trovatore”, he sang Manrico and Don Jose at Chicago. He sang in “Fanciulla del West” with Dorothy Kirsten and Colzani at Philadelphi on 10 November, a performance attended by the author and remembered as the finest he has ever experienced. The pacing and interaction among all three were remarkable and the vocalism was superb. On 7 December Franco opened the Scala season for the fourth successive year, this time in Turandot with Nilsson and Galina Vishnevskaya.
The 1965 season at the Met included performances of “La Forza del Destino” in which Bastianini was seen at that theater for the first time in five years. Only much later did the world learn that the great baritone was severely ill with cancer and that Corelli played a not insignificant role and providing engagements for it as the end approached. Franco would be a constant source of comfort for his dear friend. Yes, he is a compassionate and generous man, much kinder to those around him than to himself.
On 19 March, the Metropolitan Opera House witnessed an eruption that was probably unique in its long and fabled history. Maria Callas walked through the wings into the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle to absolute hysterics. The ovation seemed to last forever and is certainly the most intense moment that the author has ever witnessed in a theater. Corelli and Gobbi completed the magnificent trio and it remains among the most famous evenings in the history of opera. Callas’ voice did betray her at several points, most horribly on the top C in “Io quella lama”, but her every movement, her every gesture, every phrase were things of perfection and Franco was spectacular both in physical appearance and in vocal splendor. It was to be the last time that Maria and Franco would appear together.
The Corelli’s now lived in New York and Franco spent little time away from the United States during the remainder of his career. In the autumn of 1965, he appeared with the Philadelphia Opera in “Turandot” with the Chicago Lyric in “La Boheme” and with the San Francisco Opera in “Tosca”. At the Met he joined the unbeatable Kirsten and Colzani in another triumphant “Fanciulla”, and on 17 January, he abandoned the stage after act one when Eleanor Steber attempted the role of Minnie to a barrage of laughter and general ridicule from a highly expectant audience. She was completely unprepared and was seen to read lines that were pasted to furniture. She hadn’t a clue as to where she was supposed to be at any given moment and she had difficulty finding props and musical entrances. It was a painful farewell for one who had been among the company’s brightest lights for so many years. Franco pled illness and the performance was completed by Gaetano Bardini.
The Old Met closed out its history at 39th Street on 16 April and Franco joined Tebaldi in the great second act duet from “Manon Lescaut” to huge applause. Shortly after the new house opened at Lincoln Center in October, Franco appeared in “La Gioconda” with Tebaldi, Biserka Cvejic, Mignon Dunn, Cornell Macneil and Siepi. It was an enormous popular success and tickets were impossible to find for any of the nine performances.
Franco spent the winter of 1967 in Europe, with appearances as Alvaro at Florence, Cavaradossi at Parma and Andrea Chenier at Lisbon. He rejoined the Met in late March and spent the spring on the company’s annual tour. On 19 September he joined the delectable Mirella Freni in a new production of “Romeo et Juliette” and it was controversial, to say the least. There was no question that the Met’s stage had never seen two such beautiful looking lovers, but about the vocalism and the style there was much negative commentary. Franco’s diction was never his strong suit, and the incipient lisp, which is in reality more the product of his dialect than of an impediment, was not a thing of beauty in the French language. Freni sounded lovely most of the time, but her fioratura was approximate at best. Nevertheless, it was a box office smash and tickets were very difficult to find. Franco later sang in productions of the Gounod work at Philadelphia and Seattle. In November he sang in the Manzoni Requiem at Los Angeles and he ended the year with “La Forza del Destino” at Parma.
In February 1968 he partnered Crespin, and later Rysanek in “Tosca” at the Met. The performance with Leonie recalls intensity, brillance and drama that have rarely been experienced by the author. Their top registers in the third act seemed to come from some inexhaustible reservoir and it drew an enormous reaction from a mesmerized audience. Franco was now giving a fair number of concerts, including one with Montserrat Caballe at New York’s Philharmonic Hall that lives on CD. He is in amazing shape as is she, especially in the final duet from “Chenier”. There are also strong contributions by Bonaldo Giaiotti. At the Met, Franco sang in “Tosca” with Tebaldi before again joining the annual tour. On the evening of 16 Setptember Corelli and Tebaldi opened the Met season in “Adriana Lecouvreur”. Callas was in the audience, the guest of Rudolf Bing, and at the end, she and Renata enjoyed a private meeting backstage. In December, Franco and Loretta returned to Europe for “Tosca” at Nice with Suzanne Sarocca.
Our hero was starting to pace himself more carefully and he did not appear on a stage again until 4 April 1969 when he sang at the Met in “La Boheme”. After a performance of “Adriana” with Tebaldi on the 19th he again toured with the Company. He returned to New York for performances of “Boheme” and “Tosca” during the Met’s June season and then took a six month vacation.
In 1970 Franco sang his usual compliment of roles at the Met and appeared as well at Paris in “Tosca”, at Macerata in “Turandot”, at Verona in “Carmen”, and at Vienna in “Don Carlo” with Janowitz, Verrett, Eberhard Waechter and Ghiaurov, a performance that is known from its several CD incarnations. In December he appeared at Belgrade in “Carmen” and “Boheme” and then returned to New York for an intense Met season. “Ernani”, a very poor “Lucia di Lammermoor”, “Andrea Chenier”, “Boheme” and “Werther”, whose premiere had been cancelled by Franco at the last possible moment, rounded out his Met season and he again toured throughout the spring, adding performances of “Aida” along the way. There was no question that his voice was showing a lot of stress around the edges. Franco’s sense of self was suffering the consequences. It was a regular routine to hear him say that he was going to quit the stage, though that, in fact, would not happen for a few more years.
In the autumn, Franco toured to Tokyo and Seoul in a number of recitals and the year ended at Parma in “Norma” with Cristina Deutekom. On 21 January 1972 Franco returned to the Met for “Forza del Destino” and he stayed with the company until July, when he traveled to Verona for “Ernani” and “Aida”. With the exception of two appearances at Lisbon and a concert in London, Franco’s career was now pretty much limited to the United States. Very late in 1973 he sang a single concert in Vienna, Austria and then returned to the Far East for a second concert tour. There were no new roles and no new cities. Franco’s reviews were increasingly compromised and his appearances became increasingly infrequent. In 1975 he restricted himself to two roles in America, Romeo and Rodolfo, and did not appear at the Met, though he did join the tour at Boston. Late in the summer, he sang in “Carmen” and “Turandot” at the Verona Arena, and then disappeared for over a year. Fittingly, he sang his opera farewell in Italy, at Torre del Lago on 10 August 1976. The role was Rodolfo and Adriana Maliponte was his Mimi.
Retirement was not easy for Corelli and there were persistent rumors for several years that he was planning to sing “Otello” though that never happened. He and Loretta continued to live in New York and Franco was often seen enjoying the city. In June of 1980 he gave a recital at Newark and the following year he returned to New Jersey for two additional concerts. His voice had collapsed and there was little to offer. He understood that and decided that it was truly time, even while being pressured by some fans and several impressarios to return to the concert stage. Though he and Loretta now live in Italy, he does visit New York from time to time and has spent evenings at Café Taci on the upper West Side of Manhattan with friends and fans who always seem to know when he will be there.
His was the most heroic tenor sound I ever experienced and his physical presence was certainly the most impressive. When he was in his element, there was no singer who could thrill in quite the same way, and his great evenings remain among my fondest memories.
© Bob Rideout