by Maurizio Chierici, Oggi Illustrato, January 1964
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*Comment on Facebook*<aside> <img src="/icons/info-alternate_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/info-alternate_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> For context: this article dates from around the time Antonietta Stella withdrew from the 1964 La Scala production of La fanciulla del West (and was replaced by Gigliola Frazzoni) because she was angry with Corelli for not showing up for rehearsals (it was actually due to illness, and anyway he already knew the production from 1956).
The story is complete only if I mention that this storm between Corelli and Stella was largely artificially magnified by the media and then quickly subsided. By 1970, when they appeared together at the Paris Opera in Tosca, peace and mutual esteem had been restored between the artists, who respected and supported each other for the rest of their careers.
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Franco Corelli, "the Marlon Brando of melodrama," whose controversial attitudes have endangered La Scala's season, is actually a shy and reserved man: every night he falls asleep with the anguish of waking up without a voice
How handsome, tall, imposing he is in the large painting that dominates the living room; how elegant, distinguished, romantic he is in the photographs and newspaper clippings collected by his wife inside albums that grow thicker and more numerous. "Look at Franco how gracefully he smiles," Mrs. Loretta insists jubilantly, showing more photographs and more clippings that call Corelli "a hunky tenor" or "the Marlon Brando of melodrama". And while we converse, he is in the next room, motionless inside the Huguenots' black tights: with a furrowed brow he stares at a painter who is painting his portrait. "Talk to my wife, it's as if I answered you," he shouts through the door, apologizing and assuring her that he has a few more minutes.
And Mrs. Loretta gladly tells the story of her husband who began singing as a joke and then became so passionate about it that he dropped out of college and threw his engineering books in a drawer, with the hope that one day he would be able to perform in the theater. But he got to the stage almost immediately, and his warm, powerful voice soon made him a star. "That's why in some things he remained a little immature," explains the lady tenderly. "That's why he has nerves that jump easily and before the show begins he trembles with fear: he arrived too early. He's been Corelli for years and he's still a young man. Just think he's from '28! [21]".
Milan, Franco Corelli in the living room of his house on Via Crivelli: behind the tenor's back towers an oil painting depicting him in the guise of Don Josè, the protagonist of 'Carmen’. Corelli, who turned to melodrama by chance after studying engineering, is just these days posing for a well-known painter in the black costume of the 'Huguenots.
Corelli enters. He speaks little: almost reluctantly about opera, preferring to discuss cameras or Japanese film cameras. I met him four years ago in the gilded and dreadful little theater in Parma. After the performance, Corelli, happy for the triumph, invited all the journalists to a restaurant. In front of a laid table the chatter gets long and the courses are no longer counted. At one point Corelli gets up and says: "I must return to Milan; it is almost morning". He waves goodbye and goes out with that elegant step of an English gentleman. We look each other in the face. Who paid the bill? No one. A little sadly we move to the cashier. " This Corelli is quite a nice guy though!".
The painting mentioned in the article, for which he was posing at the time the interview took place: Franco Corelli as Raoul from Les Huguenots by Emilio Vitali
Now he blushes. "I assure you I did it out of sheer distraction: you knew how distracted I am. You tell him too, Loretta, if I am distracted or not. Something she always tells me! But what a bad impression!". He is confused and has the sympathetic air of a countryman caught in the wrong, who does not know how to defend himself and innocently just wrings his hands.
Would he be the star who throws tantrums, argues with everyone and puts the Scala in crisis just hours before the staging of the Fanciulla del West? He just doesn't seem like the type. Yet the chronicles speak for themselves. In recent months Corelli has been at the center of small and large controversies. From America thundered against him the voice of Giuseppe Di Stefano who discovered, in the theater where he sings, a playbill announcing Corelli's next performance with the phrase "the greatest tenor in the world will perform".
Mario Del Monaco also makes himself heard by questioning, with a polite turn of phrase, the validity of his "do di petto". On Austrian television they cut him out of a program that was to be aired on Christmas Eve, when they learned that Corelli intended to make not-so-quiet statements in response to a journalist who had spoken of him as a singer "overpaid for the merits he has".
And then the "deeds" at La Scala: the tantrum at Maestro Gandolfi over the rekindling of an old controversy, and the outburst of Antonietta Stella refusing to sing next to him in the Fanciulla del West, complaining that she had to do all the rehearsals alone: the handsome tenor had never been seen. "But I had a medical certificate. I was ill," retorts Corelli who then begins to talk about the great fear he has of losing his voice and polemicizes in rather harsh words with "the professional ethics" of the dear lady. But the fear of being sick is genuine, not a diva behavior.
"One fine day maybe I get up and I can't sing anymore," he says. "When I think about it it makes me crazy. What a terrible job! All it takes is a blast of air, a grain of dust. In Milan I always walk around with a small sprayer in my pocket. It has disinfectant liquid in it. I wouldn't want the smog to... That's why I didn't take part in the rehearsals. My throat was really hurting: my poor throat!".
He put on a good face again, so docile and submissive that one can hardly believe how behind that meek expression lies a fiery temperament, capable of surges that delight the chronicles and leave those who fall victim to them stunned. Here's one of them: two years ago at the San Carlo in Naples Fedora Barbieri and Corelli appear at the end of the first scene of the second act of Trovatore to receive the customary applause. They are greeted by an ovation. "Bravi, bravissimi, " everyone shouts, but from the proscenium box, in the third row, a young man dissents. "Hurray for Barbieri. Away with Corelli ruining the show", he shouts with conviction.
It is a cold shower on the tenor's happiness. Corelli was glad of that applause that melted away his fear of the first trills. There was bad air in the theater that night, and the beginning had not been brilliant: at last the nightmare was over and one could sing with a calm heart. But the young man from the proscenium stage disagrees. He insists, gasps, and finally gestures to help Corelli understand that he doesn't want him. "Here I lost my head," the singer now explains.
Milan, Franco Corelli and soprano Antonietta Stella present themselves to the audience at La Scala at the end of a highly applauded edition of 'Trovatore'. The photo dates back to 1962: this year Stella gave up performing 'La fanciulla del West' together with Corelli.
"I went out into the hallway and after getting rid of the extras in wigs who were trying to stop me, I reached the box of the spectator who was hostile to me, vainly pursued by Loretta's voice pleading to turn back. I had the jerkin and the broadsword. I grabbed the young man by the lapel, but then regretted it: I did nothing and went back down".
This is the character of Franco Corelli: good, kind, shy and very emotional, who, however, as a good Marche native has a hard head and does not accept unjust rudeness. To tell the truth he receives very few rudenesses especially when there are many ladies in the room. Have you ever seen how the women look at Corelli? They don't detach themselves for a moment from the binoculars. "How terrible he is!", "How proud he is!", "But how well he squeals!", they murmur spellbound. And he who knows he's being pampered by all those looks takes care of his makeup like a prima donna, adjusting a nice tuft of fake hair on his forehead or performing in 6-centimeter heels to look even taller than the 1.87 meters he measures.
I tell him that I heard him at La Scala and he is getting better and better. He doesn't do cartwheels and gets curious as to whether I have discovered new flaws and of course new merits for him. "Do I really seem better?", he asks. "Have you noticed that I am changing my voice? For months and months I studied with Lauri-Volpi who taught me to vocalize more gracefully. I am a dramatic tenor, with a hard voice, which is not difficult to bend. Well, now I have learned to spin certain nuances that I once would have dreamed of. I can even do La Bohème. And that's not all: I still have to work hard because in two or three years I want to try my hand at Otello. What a scary thing that night!".
Atlanta (United States). Franco Corelli together with his wife Loretta Di Lelio a few years ago: the tenor had been called to the United States to celebrate with a performance at the White House the centenary of the unification of Italy. Johnson, who applauded him enthusiastically that day, has now invited Corelli to Washington to sing in a concert to be attended only by the president's family and friends. This is one of the few photographs in which Mrs. Corelli appears with her husband. "I don't want to get between Franco and his female admirers," she says, "so I prefer to remain in the shadows." Loretta is the daughter of a famous bass and from a very young age devoted herself to opera. She left the theater in 1953 when she met her "beautiful tenor.”
Franco Corelli becomes better precisely because he is always afraid of making mistakes, so he studies and never rests on his laurels. But it is precisely this emotional charge, which drives him to do better and better, that sometimes gets in his way and "shuts down" his nerves in the dressing room minutes before the maestro takes the podium. And in these moments of drama for him, for the theater, and for the other singers, his wife Loretta is the angel who melts away all fear. She closes in with Franco and talks to him calmly getting him through the bad moment and eventually managing to send that great tenor everyone knows to the stage.
"I don't want anything to be said about me", begs the lady. "I always speak for him, only for him. I don't want to come between my husband and his admirers. I must absolutely never appear. Please don't say anything about me. A photograph? Let's not joke around". Loretta Di Lelio is in love with her handsome Franco both as a man and as a singer. She also has opera in her blood: she is the daughter of a famous bass and had devoted herself to melodrama at a very young age. In 1953, however, she met the failed engineer and aspiring tenor Franco Corelli, and Loretta gave up her trills to devote herself entirely to him.
Now the Corellis are packing their trunks to go to the United States, where they will stay for six months. Franco is to sing privately for President Johnson and his family: in the lady's notebook is the invitation card with the date marked in red. Loretta is happy to return to the White House. She first went there in 1961 when her husband performed for the Kennedys. "I came back from Washington all happy," she recounts, "because my blue and white hat bought in Ancona was nicer than Jacqueline's."
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