Franco Corelli: Prince of Tenors

by Rene Seghers, Rene Seghers

His exceptional good looks made him a matinee idol, and Franco Corelli – the Prince of Tenors – was dubbed “Mr. Soldout” for 20 consecutive years. In 1958, just seven years after beginning his career, he was already the highest-paid tenor in Italy. Following his Met debut in 1961, he was celebrated as the greatest tenor in the world, a position that he retained until his departure from the Met in 1975.

His charismatic performances in such operas as La Vestale and Fedora (both in collaboration with Maria Callas), coupled with a formidable mystique, as well as a number of notorious and colorful incidents, including his real-life sword fight with Boris Christoff in Rome, the Callas walkout there, the beating up of a spectator in Naples, and the alleged biting of Birgit Nilsson on a Boston tour of Turandot , created a mania for Corelli.

Nearly a decade in the making, this definitive biography is based on the author's extensive research of theater archives and interviews with the opera star's numerous friends, family members, colleagues (Nilsson, Pavarotti, and many others), as well as the management of some of the world's leading opera houses.

Genres: Biography

528 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2007

Reviews

[Jodell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhaustive information about Corelli's career, tracking every single opera and recording session in order. The determination to follow this rigid structure made this one of the least well-written biographies I've read. It seemed the author had a pile of notes about each event, wrote up his notes in prose, and moved on to the next pile. He does fit around this structure stories of Corelli's late start in attempting an opera career, his lifelong personal insecurities, his colorful and even violent feuds with other artists, opera listeners, and opera directors, and his family life. It reveal many details Corelli kept confidential as long as he lived. The author persuaded Corelli's younger cousin that adding them to the biography would produce a better record of the man. Singers can find detail about how he worked to achieve the virile tenor voice that made him famous and filled opera houses during the 1960s, how he improved it after reaching the top by taking lessons from an older famous Italian tenor, and how he failed to foresee the point, in his fifties, at which his voice would no longer sustain the pressures he was putting on it. His devoted loving wife Loretta helped him overcome stage fright and make career decisions.

[Erskine Maytorena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is beautifully written and disproves a lot of bs about Corelli using sound tech to improve his Vidal technique. The author uses original resources (actual reviews of live performances in Chicago for example) that describe exactly what Corelli would record in the studio later in his career. Truly our greatest tenor

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one of the previous reviewers said, it is a book for fans of Franco Corelli... which I am. I actually read the book a couple of years ago and I loved this biography! I found it informative, well-researched, and well-written in an engaging style of someone who knows music and opera. I also liked the many photographs of Corelli at different stages of his life, including his childhood.
I did not agree with some of the author's reviews of Corelli's specific performances. In particular, I found him a little harsh on Corelli's recording of Ingemisco from Verdi's Requiem, which I only heard on youtube, but it is my second favorite recording of the piece ever, after Pavarotti. I also found the author equally harsh on Corelli's early movie-opera "Carmen". While I agree that it is overacted, that is one of the things I love about him: unlike many opera singers (cough... Pavarotti... cough - whom I adore as a singer), Corelli could also act. And Don Jose is supposed to be overreacting and overdramatic in the last scene.
But apart from certain subjective disagreements, I still very much enjoyed reading about Corelli's life and his regretfully short career and I am happy to own this book.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another biography of one of the greatest singers in living memory. The way in which the stories of his life are told are engaging, and endearing. However it is frustrating to see another book hailing a singer as a super human, with no talk of training at all. Is this hagiography, or biography?

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

My rating is entirely based on the freakish vocal power of Franco Corelli.

[Marc Boisseau · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book for the fans of Franco Corelli.