By C. Bianchi, Alba, April 19, 1959
<aside> 🇮🇹 Clicca qui per il testo originale in italiano 🇮🇹
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*Comment on Facebook*He has black and sparkling eyes, wavy and thick hair, a face with regular features softened by a dimple on the chin, a "hunk" stature, a sweet smile and a beautiful voice. He resembles the American actor Edmund Purdom, but he is Italian by blood and is contested between opera, television and cinema. He is Franco Corelli, the "handsome" tenor par excellence, the unsurpassed interpreter of "don José" in Carmen.
<aside> 🌹 Franco Corelli, who came into the world of opera just over seven years ago, has attracted general attention not only for his vocal qualities, but also for his beauty, his photogenic features and his exceptional physical appearance.
He was born in Ancona in 1923 [21]; he began to sing almost for his own pleasure and, after winning two competitions, he succeeded in "breaking through". Today he is Callas' favorite tenor. He began his activity singing the part of Don José in "Carmen" and this character remains his favorite; in fact, he has sung it more than a hundred times.
The tenor is one meter and 83 centimeters tall, he is a skilled swimmer and if he had not become a singer he would probably have become a naval engineer. He is a passionate car driver and owns a very fast car. His "hobby", however, is the cameras of which we can say he has a collection. Corelli continuously moves around the major Italian theaters and for this reason he has two apartments, one in Rome and one in Milan. In addition to his commitments with the major opera houses, Franco Corelli has signed a seven-year contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer for 14 films. He likes very much the "westerns" because they are closer to his lively and dramatic temperament. Corelli is not yet married, but is engaged to the young singer Loretta Di Lelio.
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The tenants of a house in Via Crivelli, Milan, know when their celebrated neighbor is present; they stretch their ears to try to catch the echo of the splendid voice that rises confidently behind the walls of his apartment, but they hear nothing. Franco Corelli, the most beautiful tenor in the world, has had the walls of his apartment covered with a special insulating material that does not allow his voice to overflow outside and also prevents him from being disturbed by street noise. The tenants of Via Crivelli, however, know he is there, because they have seen his powerful teal-colored car parked in front of the door; dozens of female eyes peek out from behind the curtains, ready to light up when the tenor's handsome figure looms over the doorway. Franco Corelli is very handsome, with that stature of a discus thrower, wavy hair, dark eyes and a regular face. He always dresses with extreme elegance, but he is not a "dandy", he plays it safe and his suits are classic, his ties sober, his hair perfect. Often next to him there is a woman figure that makes the admirers sigh. Corelli is not married, although he is 36 [38] years old (he turned them last April 8 ), but he is very close to his girlfriend, Loretta Di Lelio, a singer herself, who has taken on the difficult task of being the secretary of a handsome, famous man, contended and constantly targeted by his admirers. The admirers! Franco Corelli smiles as he reads their letters and wonders if all this would have happened if instead of "discovering" his vocation as a singer he had become a naval engineer as his father would have wished. Probably not, even if success as a man would not have been lacking.
CHILDHOOD ON THE SEA
Franco Corelli was born in Ancona and always speaks with nostalgia of the house near the sea where he was a child. He was a very lively little boy, always engaged in all sorts of battles that took place on the hill of Capodimonte on which the house rested. Franco's father was employed in the shipyards and for his son, so handsome and agile, he dreamed of a degree in engineering. Franco liked the sea very much and as soon as he could he would run away from home to go swimming and rowing. He became very good at both sports, so much so that he participated with honor in swimming and rowing championships.
At the age of eighteen, Franco Corelli finished his studies as a surveyor, but the outbreak of war halted all activities. It was a terrible thing; Ancona was bombed several times and in an air raid even the Corelli's house was destroyed. Faced with the pain of his parents, and above all of his mother whom he literally "adored", Franco swore to himself that he would work until he crashed just to see the house rise again, bigger and more beautiful than before.
And the sea? Although it stretched out in front of him, so inviting, Corelli had to forget it little by little, because his job as surveyor in the reconstruction office in Ancona required that he keep his feet firmly on the ground. There were so many houses to build, an enormous amount of work to be done that the sea was becoming almost a memory.
As for singing, Corelli didn't even think about it; he had never sung, although he liked to listen to opera pieces and if he could hum something. Which of the Italians couldn't? But there was a precedent in the family. Franco's brother had left home to sing in a revue company. It had nothing to do with opera, though, of course; it was light music, songs. [That's not exactly true, Ubaldo had sung in operas before that.]
SINGING FASCINATED HIM
Franco Corelli's singing career began absolutely by chance, in a completely banal way. The young man, in an evening of 1946 went with some friends to the house of a piano teacher and during the evening, when she mentioned playing an opera piece, Corelli hummed it almost without realizing it. After having listened to him, everyone told him that he could have tried to sing as long as he studied seriously, but Franco was very doubtful about his talents. How was it possible to reach certain heights with the help of study alone? It seemed to him that in order to sing one already had to possess exceptional qualities, but instead he had to convince himself that continuous, severe, careful study could miraculously open the throat and develop the voice. Little by little the "hidden" voice came out and Franco felt the joy of singing with his throat open, of enjoying opera music in all its beauty. He really had no thought of success, he was just happy to have opened a miraculous door beyond which there was a world of infinite beauty. The rest happened again by chance, as Corelli said recently.
One day he went to Florence for a trip, in a group with his friends and they all convinced him to try a competition organized by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Corelli agreed and won the competition. It was 1950 [49]. That first victory decided him to enroll in the Experimental Center and the following year he participated in the competition in Spoleto.
It was a disaster. Corelli saw among the examiners the unforgettable Beniamino Gigli, whom he considered his "maestro" and whose records he loved to listen to whenever he felt the need to hear a "golden" voice. The idea that Gigli could judge him made the young tenor lose control and the rehearsal ended in a fiasco.
That cold shower taught Franco that a singer must know how to control himself, have strong nerves, and not lose his head in difficult situations, and the following year, stubborn and determined, Corelli returned to Spoleto certain of winning. He was right and from that moment he started his activity as a singer.
From Ancona Franco Corelli moved to Rome and studied tirelessly to make his debut in Aida. However, his teachers realized that this opera was not the most suitable for his genre and made him study Carmen. The part of the handsome "Don José" was Corelli's good fortune and the singer is particularly fond of this character linked to his debut in Spoleto.
In 1953 [52], the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome saw the young tenor in the role of Romeo in Giulietta e Romeo; the handsome boy from Ancona then suddenly landed at La Scala, the last destination of "arrivals" and found himself, almost without realizing it, at the side of the "prima donna" of the century, Maria Meneghini Callas, in the part of Licinio in La Vestale. From then on, he had a rapid career, he moved faster and faster, was offered contracts by foreign impresarios, and performed on television. Corelli's fame spread everywhere and that powerful means of diffusion which is television brought his pleasant image to millions of people, unleashing a real "cheer", needless to say, among the female public. It is not always the case, indeed rather rarely, that singers combine their singing talents with their aesthetic ones, but this is not the case with Franco Corelli; he lacks nothing, except for the assault on the most demanding operas which he has not yet tackled. He does not doubt that he will be able to sing Otello and he thinks, to console himself, that also the great Mario Del Monaco kept this very difficult opera among the last ones of his repertoire. In the meantime, Corelli does not stop studying and does not want anyone to say that he is the "third man in Italian opera" after Del Monaco and Di Stefano; he wants to be himself, with all his merits and faults, his hopes and certainties, his "hobbies" and his good will. Corelli has so much good will that nothing scares him, not even the probability of making a film next to Marilyn Monroe, as should happen according to the contract signed with Metro for the duration of seven years. Next summer the melancholy-eyed tenor will play a very challenging cinemascope in which he will have to not only sing but be able to act. [Nothing came of it.]
During this opera season Corelli sang in Rome and Milan, he toiled a lot and in the rare moments of freedom he answered the ever increasing number of letters from his admirers and composed a few songs. He confesses in fact to love light music and is not ashamed to say that he likes Domenico Modugno, even if some severe critics may consider this mixture between bel canto and light music a sort of sacrilege.
Corelli never forgot the promise he made to his family to rebuild the house where he was born, destroyed by the bombs. The promise has been kept and since last December a new big and beautiful house built with the singer's earnings has risen in Ancona, a few meters from the sea. Unfortunately Franco's mother is no longer with us; she left nine years ago when her beautiful son was at the beginning of his new career. Her memory is always fixed in Corelli's mind, and he has not yet ceased to wear mourning; in speaking of himself, the tenor has declared that he will cease to wear it the day he can sing a Mass for his mother on the anniversary of her passing. This filial devotion is touching and Franco Corelli is convinced that his success, his hours of glory are protected by that angel of a woman who gave him life.
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