Franco Corelli

Just a generation ago, posterity hadn't quite made up its mind about Franco Corelli. Corelli was an operatic oddity, a self-trained singer with movie star looks who largely learned his craft from listening to old records of his predecessors. Corelli made up for what he may have lacked in conventionally trained, "beautiful" tone with an approach that emphasized power and electric energy over all, and gradually rose through the ranks of tenors to become a major star of Italian opera. This EMI collection, The Very Best of Franco Corelli, concentrates its focus on recordings Corelli made in the 1960s during the height of his popularity. As these selections are "bleeding chunks" drawn from recordings of complete operas such as Pagliacci, Rigoletto, Tosca, and others, this is kind of an odd sampling of Corelli.

A remarkable 1954 RAI production starring a young Franco Corelli and the incomparable Tito Gobbi, with Mafalda Micheluzzi as Nedda and Lino Puglisi as Silvio. Orchestra and Chorus of Radiotelevisione Italiana under the direction of Alfredo Simonetto. DVD also includes Corelli in arias from Carmen, Aida, Il Trovatore, Cavalleria Rusticana, and the Verdi Requiem.

This DVD is for the people who are interested in studying the early career of Franco Corelli. Singing-wise, it is a good production, with Maria Caniglia singing some beautiful phrases with a biting technique, which is very interesting, especially in the middle and lower registers, but with harsher high notes, and with a decent if not great Scarpia by Gian Giacomo Guelfi.

By Monica

Franco Corelli's charismatic Don Josè finally available on home video in this 1956 production with the great tenor in his early prime. Carmen is sung by Belén Amparan and Anselmo Colzani contributes a swaggering Escamillo.

“This is something of a find – a production produced in Milan's television studios in 1973 that does more than justice to Giordano's verismo work about personal conflicts at the time of the French Revolution. It's directed, with considerable imagination, by the Czech Vaclav Kaslik, at the top of his profession in the 70s. In realistic period sets he unerringly creates the milieu of a degenerate aristocracy in Act 1 and of the raw mob-rule of the Revolution in the succeeding acts. The only drawback is the poor lip-synch. Conductor Bruno Bartoletti makes certain we're unaware of the score's weaker moments and releases all the romantic passion in Giordano's highly charged writing for his principals.

Franco Corelli: Heroes
Classical | CD | MP3 192kbps | NO BOOKS NO COVERS | 110 MB
EMI Classics B000002SAP | Release Date: 1997

Hear the Tenor of the century! This Franco Corelli CD contains many of his greatest recordings.

It is strange to find that two such prolific recording artists in the same field should never before have recorded together. This disc was released by Decca to coincide with the concert the two singers gave together at the Royal Albert Hall, on October 9th, and happily it offers what the concert tended to neglect full-scale, full-blooded operatic duets.

A great debut makes an impression that remains in your memory for a lifetime. But how often do you hear two amazing debuts in one performance? That’s what happened more than forty years ago when Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli made simultaneous Met debuts in Il Trovatore before a delirious public. A week later, the February 4, 1961, Saturday matinee Trovatore was broadcast live on the Texaco-Metropolitan Opera radio network. New York had been hit by a major snowstorm, but the house was packed with an enthusiastic audience, alerted by the reviews to the sensational new singers.

“…Tebaldi proved at the Maggio Musicale at Florence in 1953 under Mitropoulos that Leonora was to be among her most successful roles, and here she confirms the fact in spades with her lustrous, effortlessly shaped and eloquent traversal of the role. By her side she has the incomparable Corelli, singing his first Don Alvaro, and revealing that his brilliant, exciting yet plangent tone is precisely the right instrument to project Alvaro's loves and sorrows. At this stage of his career his thrilling upper register and incisive delivery of the text were at their most potent, as he makes abundantly clear in aria and duet. As his antagonist, Bastianini sings with the kind of Verdian élan seemingly now extinct among his breed. He may not be the most subtle of Verdian baritones, but here his macho approach ideally suits Don Carlo's vengeful imprecations.” (Gramophone Classical Music Guide)