Franco Corelli

Franco Corelli, a native of Ancona, Italy, sang first at Spoleto in his

native country in 1952. His debut role was Don José in CARMEN.

His large tenor voice from the beginning was ideal for the heroic

Italian repertoire, and he has excited audiences al,l over the world in

such roles as Radames, Andrea Chénier, Manrico, Calaf, and Ca

varadossi. Afrer his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1961 (as Manrico)

he became one of the M et' s most popular singers. ,

IN 1957 I made my debut at La Scala in the title role of Handel's

H ercules, surrounded by a star-studded cast that included Elisa

beth Schwarzkopf, Fedora Barbieri, Ettore Bastianini, and Franco

Corelli. The main reason for my being chosen for the role undoubt

edly was my size ( six foot six and two hundred forty pounds), and

it soon appeared to be the main reason f or concern to Franco

Corelli. At that time he was the tallest, handsomest figure on the

Italian stage, and I topped him by two and a half inches. I was un

aware of the complex my height was giving our tenor from Ancona

until the bootmaker carne to my dressing room to fit my boots. I

suddenly realized that Lucia, my wife, was measuring the heels of

my boots with her fingers and was asking the bootmaker to add at

least three inches to my height. I began to protest.

"Calm yourself, darling," she said, smiling very sweetly, "I know

what l'm doing." She had been tipped off that Franco, stewing over

my size, had insisted on extra-high heels far his boots. At the first

costume rehearsal Franco stalked on stage a towering six foot

seven, and found me waiting for him at six foot ten. He never quite

got over it: years later, when we sang together at the l\1et, he al

ways greeted me with, "Non tacchi alti,

okay?" And every time we

0
ºNo high heels."

58

Franco Corelli

took a curtain call together, he would firmly hold me clown with

one hand while he took his bow on tiptoes.

During those years I f ound Franco to be a very simpatico,

friendly colleague. He had a quick, smiling way about him despite

his obviously high-strung personality. Many stories circulated about

his temperament, and, I am sure, with a good share of exagger

ation. But to deny he has a highly emotional makeup would be a

downright falsehood, and indeed, it probably contributes much to

the excitement he creates on stage, an animal excitement, as sorne

describe it. All singers get nervous before important performances,

and Franco is no exception, but he always seems to transform his

nerves into dynamic energy on the stage, resulting in an electrify

ing performance.

From the mid-197os on, Franco and I have become very close

personal friends, and have had many opportunities to discuss vocal

technique. An honest appraisal of his sensational career discloses

that below the surface of that high-voltage nature lies a keen, de

termined mind, consumed with a passionate desire to lmow more

and more about the voice.

Franco had sung with me during my vocal slump, which had

begun in the late 1960s, and my recovery after 1972 fascinated him.

He often questioned me, trying to fathom how I had engineered

such a recovery. This developed into a series of discussions, sorne

times highlighted with a look at Franco's vocal cords, or a tum at

the piano sharing the challenge of sorne difficult vocal exercises.

One time in 1978 I showed him a type of fast-moving scale that

he simply could not begin to do. It was then that I got an in-depth

view of the driving spirit in Corelli that had impelled him to star
dom. I didn't realize how much it upset and challenged him to find

he couldn't master this type of scale, until I saw him several days

later and discovered he had spent most of bis waking hours attack

ing the problem with a bulldog tenacity, almost with a fury. Not

only did he conquer it in the next two weeks, but he put it in his

throat ali the way up to a high C sharp. This fierce desire for self

mastery must be taken into account when one tries to understand

how he achieved such great vocal heights.

I got Franco's interview for this book one spring day while we

59

Franco Corelli

were driving to south Jersey in my Caddie, the cassette machine on

the seat between us.

HINES: Did you sing as a child?º

CORELLI: No, I never sang until I was eigbteen.

mNES: That's interesting. You are the only singer in my book, be

sides me, who did not sing as a child. I have heard rumors to the

effect that you never formally studied voice. Is that true?

CORELLI: No. 'When I discovered I had a voice, I entered a vocal

contest. The composer Pizzetti was present, and he said, "It's a

shame you don't study. It would be a sin to let such talent go to

waste." You see, I had plenty of volume, but the voice was incom

plete . . . I had no high notes, I was preoccupied singing even a B

flat. It was a yell. So, when I retumed home to Ancona, I began to

do sorne vocalizing with a friend of mine, Scaravelli.

HINES: Was he a singing teacher?

COREL~I: No, but he himself was studying with Melocchi, the

teacher of Del Monaco. He was a young man with a passion for try

ing to understand vocal technique. Working with him was like a sci

entifi.c study, which I feel was important.

lllNES: Did Scaravelli have other students?

truly great technician in Italy, so when Scaravelli retumed home

from his lessons, he brought me all of the inf ormation he had

leamed from him. I studied more or less with that method.

HINES: Did you ever study with Melocchi yourself?

CORELLI: I only went twice, and two times are not worth talking

about.

HINES: How would you describe Melocchi's method?

CORELLI: It was a method based upon vocal emission note by note.

[Franco then demonstrated by singing the vowel awe on one note

ata time.] It was very simple, based upon a low larynx with max

imum opening of the throat.

HINES: Would you explain what an open throat means to you?

CORELLI: To sing with the larynx low. There's no other way, it's

like when you yawn. I believe that if you show a young singer how

This interview was conducted in Italian and subsequently translated into

English.

60

Franco Corelli

to lower his larynx, he can do it, but if you try it with a person who

has already been singing for twenty years, he won't be able to. You

need good muscles to sing with a low larynx. A person who is al

ready forty-five or fifty, you will not get bim to open bis throat, you

need young muscles. But the larynx must remain in that position

without forcing.

mNEs: In other words, when you open your throat, you must not

hold it rigidly in position . . .

CORELLI: Exactly. Don't force. The voice must float, like the hall

on the water jet.

HINES: Then Melocchi's method concentrates your attention more

CORELLI: Yes, it is a laryngeal school of singing. You go against

the breath with your singing. Practically speaking, since you use

pressure of the breath there, these muscles [ of the larynx] must

work more. You must appoggiare [lean] upon the vocal cords them

selves.

HINES: Explain what you mean by leaning upon the vocal cords.

CORELLI: You do awe, awe, awe, trying out the vocal cords [be

coming aware of where they are located]. You lean on the voice

there.

HINES: Do you actually become conscious of closing your cords?

CORELLI: No. You are only conscious that, as you sing higher, the

larynx doesn't rise.

lllNES: This reminds me a bit of Pavarotti, who spoke of biting the

sound.

CORELLI: Yes, ahi [he sang], attacking on the vocal cords.

BINES: He maintains that the voice originates in the larynx, not in

the mask.

CORELLI: That is logical, clearl

mNEs: He used clear attacks . . . awe, awe, awe . . . from the di

aphragm and larynx . . .

CORELLI: Yes, that is when you lean on the cords. That was the

school of Melocchi. But it is important how you employ this

method. When you make the attack here [ the larynx], you have to

see if your throat can take it. Because if you do awe, awe, awe [he

attacked each note almost glottally] a hundred times, and then look

Franco C orelli

in the mirror, you will see the cords are red. And many have sung

this way.

HINES: Perhaps the way they use their breath determines whether

or not they survive. From the interviews I have done, there seem to
be various ways to use it.

CORELLI: All those you have interviewed are people who have ar

rived, people who have a throat adapted far singing. I believe that

every one of them, whether they breathed this way or that, would

have sung just the same. But in conclusion, the throat is relaxed, not

forced. Open throat meaos a lowered tangue [and larynx] as in a

yawn, but the throat does not participate in the sound.

HINES: But when you bite the sound, don't you feel the throat

working?

CORELLI: It's logical that you feel that little effort you feel also

when you speak. But the use of the voice leaves many questions. It

is truly a mystery. Who knows whether if Titta Ruffo had not

placed bis voice in the nose [ nasally], he would have ever become

the great Titta RuHo? And yet it was clear later that bis method

was not exactly right. Still, you can't be sure if it was bis method or

sorne unrelated physical problem that caused him to stop singing;

he finished very young.

HINES: We touched on breathing a moment ago. What are your

thoughts on this subject?

CORELLI: I'm in accord only with natural breathing: to not sing

with the chest, but use the cliapbragm. It' s not necessary to make a

great study, because if the diaphragm responds, you go. I know

that much depends on what quantity of breath comes out, in what

manner it comes out, with what velocity it comes out ...

HINES: Sorne people advocate pushing the breath against the

cords, others advocate just the opposite, and they speak of drinking

the breath ( or air), that it's good for the voice.

CORELLI: It's true in the sense of "drinking the sound" in arder not

to consume the breath. If you use a lot of breath, it is certainly not

a good method. You must find a way to place the voice with very

little breath. But bear in mind that there are many whose nature it
is to use a lot of breath, and many whose nature it is to use little

Franco C orelli

breath. One thing is clear, all people who are short on breath are

those who use too much breath.

HINES: Too great a quantity. They waste it.

CORELLI: Yes.

HINES: But you feel a person's physical nature enters into it as

well?

CORELLI: It's like the gasoline your car consumes. [That reminded

me to check the gas gauge.] There are cars that use more gasoline

and there are cars that use less.

mNEs: A good analogy. If I had driven my Vega today, it would

have consumed half the gas. And a singer' s vocal mechanism is a

machi ne that consumes air.

How about the use of the tongue? Many singers insist the tangue

m ust be f orward, touching the back of the lower teeth. Y et there is ,

the case of--[I menti.oned a famous singer, not included in this

book], a great arti.st, who sings all of his high notes with the ti.p of

his tongue way up, just about touching his palate.

CORELLI: If he sings well with the tongue high, why should he

lower it? He has made a sackful of money. Naturally, if you have a 1

young student, you must try to train bis voice according to a theory

as perf ect as possible. Yo u try to have him maintain an open throat, 1

as with the yawn. Then, if you see bis tangue is up, you try to train

it to go down. You see, you always need a maestro of great experi

ence and with a good ear. Many sounds may be produced incor

rectly, and still sound good. A maestro may say, "It's beauti.ful,"

and instead it might be a sound that can ruin you. But you can
7

t al

ways lay the blame on the maestro, because eighty percent of the

time it is the student's fault, one who does not follow his teacher

advice, or does not take his studies seriously . . . or have the intelli-

gence.

HINES: But, back to the tangue ...

CORELLI: I don't know . . . I have heard it said that the tangue

should be shaped like a spoon. I know that the tangue must be

relaxed, because it is a muscle that is attached to the muscles of the

throat. If the tangue stiffens, then the muscles of the throat stiHen.

Singing should be based upan relaxation, except for the diaphragm ..

The tangue for me is a thing that I would not care to think about.

Franco Corelli

When the sound is in the right place, the tongue is down, the whole

tongue, Bat, below the teeth, as when you sleep.

HINES: Do you think of raising the soft palate?

CORELLI: I believe that the yawn raises it.

HINES: How about placement and projecti.on of the voice? Sorne

people object to the idea of placing the voice forward, or projecting

it out in front of you.

CORELLI: That's not right. We are constructed in such a way that

there's a curve . . . and that is the path of the breath.

I tried an experiment: I sang ah, and then puta wad of cotton in

front of my mouth. I could no longer hear a sound. Also, with the

cotton one or two centimeters from the mouth, the voice re

mained inside, the vibrations clid not carry. But, with a piece of cot

ton in front of the nose or the eyes, the voice sounded normal. So
the exit f or the voice is the mouth. Then what is the purpose of

aiming the voice up in the mask?

However, if you make a sound produced in the mouth alone, a

strange voice comes out. It' s an open, spread, uncontrolled sound.

But if you think of sending the voice up in the head [the mask], the

voice comes out round and focused, the color is sweeter, more sim

patico. So it means that this part here [the mask] helps to protect

the voice.

The vibrations that propagate in the cheeks, jaws, eye sockets,

the frontal parts of the head, perhaps serve in directing the breath,

giving beauty to the voice, giving a more effortless trajectory to the

breath.

HINES: Where, more specifically, is this place in the mask, toward

which one directs the voice?

CORELLI: It depends on one's anatomy, because one person has

high cheekbones . . . One person puts it here, another puts it there,

and no two have the same place. Sorne people say, "Toe more you

open your mouth, the more you will hear the voice." That is not

necessarily sol Someone singing with a small mouth can just as eas

ily project a big sound. However, the important thing is, if you feel

the voice striking in the mask, it means that the voice and throat

are free. Because when the throat is free, and you let the breath

Franco Corelli

pass tranquilly, and the cords are healthy, only then the voice

strikes in the mask.

I don't believe absolutes exist, but I do believe that ninety-nine

percent of all voices can be placed with the result of a more or less

beautiful singing sound. All would be able to sing, whether on

pitch or not. But this would depend on having the good fortune to

find a teacher with an absolutely exact ear.

HINES: How can a student know a good teacher?

students, not one of whom has the necessary qualities to make it.

They might have the voice and not the intelligence, or the persis

tence in studying. So much depends on whether or not the student

takes up singing with love and seriousness.

HINES: You mentioned earlier that in your first days of singing you

had trouble with your high notes. This is a common problem

among male singers.

CORELLI: Men must resolve this problem of the passaggio [pas

sage, transition].

HINES: Which occurs on D natural [ above middle C] more or less

for the bass, E natural for the baritone, and F sharp for most

tenors.

CORELLI: There are many beautiful voices that have not found the

way to the high notes ... how to girare [tum] the high notes. One

thing is very clear: if you make a middle-voice sonnd and then go

up to the range of the passaggio, singing with the same kind of

sound, it' s not going to work. You must make a change as you go

up, otherwise ... [He sang ah on a scale going up through the

passaggio to the high voice without changing the color of the

vowel. It ended up a spread yell.]

HINES: So one has to go from awe in the middle voice to oo in the

high voice, with oh lying somewhere in between.

CORELLI: You have stated it clearly. Now this famous passaggio,

between a note placed normally in the central voice on awe and the

high note on oo, goes more in the mask, it goes higher [in place

ment]. Practically speaking, that is the path. Almost everybody

knows that the passaggio is rounded out. If you sing an open ah

65

Franco Corelli

you can arrive to an F sharp. But if you try to keep it ah, it won't
turn until at least G sharp, because you are now spreading the

sound.

For example, Caruso, in doing scales, began with ah, then in the

passaggio used oh, and in the high notes uh [ a sound between up

in English and awe].

IllNES: Actually, if one sings pure oo properly on a high note and

opens his jaw as if to go to awe, the sound comes out uh. There is

no question that the color of the vowel must change as you go up.

Franco, as you go up into the passaggio, do you make a bit more

space in the throat?

CORELLI: Well, a general opening, including the mouth, is neces

sary.

lilNES: Then this rounding out of the passaggio you spoke of, this

is opening the throat more?

CORELLI: Obviously. But all of this should be carried out with the

help of a good teacher. Yo u can work alone also, perf ecting the

voice . . . but too much perfection can ruin you, because, unfortu

nately, the voice is a mystery. You can form the voice, mold it, to a

certain point, but not beyond. You can take Caruso's records and

imitate bis voice. But you cannot go against your own nature too

long. In the fury of imitation, you ruin your own nature.

HINES: Franco, when I first sang with you at La Scala, you had a

noticeably fast vibrato.

CORELLI: That's true.

IIlNES: How is it called in Italian?

CORELLI: Caprino [little goat].

HINES: You mentioned to me severa! years ago that you didn't like

this vibrato, so you got rid of it. In fact, ever since your Met debut,

I've never detected a trace of it. That's remarkable. Ilow did you

accomplish this?

CORELLI: I believe this caprino is caused by breath that has not

well, it was somewhat dispersed. When the breath was taught to go

to the right place, the voice became steady. It was a vibrato that

carne from a certain physical force. It's not that you think of the

66

Franco Corelli

breath itself. When I sang in the beginning, I never thought where

to place a note; I opened rny rnouth and I sang. That is not singing

with technique, that is natural singing. Singing with technique is

when you think where to place the voice. All the notes must go to

ward the same point . . . [He sang ee, eh, awe, oh, oo, then he

repeated this incorrectly with each vowel done with different open

ings and closings, clifferent types of placernent, sorne bright and

sorne dark.] All vowels rnust be directed to the same point. As my

voice found an easier path, it grew steady. However, what changed

was only the use of the breath, since the color of rny voice re

mained unchanged.

HINES: This vibrato ... <lid the body shake as well?

CORELLI: Also the body. But rnany farnous singers had this, includ

ing Pertile, Supervia, Bjorling. Also RuHo, a little. But rnuch of this

depends u pon f orcing.

HINES: How <lid you acquire your beautiful passaggio to the bigh

notes?

CORELLI: I found it by imitation. I listened to rnany records, no

one singer in particular. By finding the passaggio . . . no longer

singing open, but rounded out . . . I found a greater range on top,

up to the B natural, and with more ease. But in 196o I found the

way to sing up to D Hat.

In the earlier years I had sung a very heavy repertoire. And I

made the voice very heavy when I sang [he dernonstrated with a

phrase frorn Norma with a dark sound]. Then, when I began to sing
Trovatore in 1958, and Turandot-very high operas-1 tried to put

the voice in a lighter position, a bit brighter. Before, the voice was

more baritonal. This lightness gave me the extra notes, putting a lit

tle more sweetness, gentleness, in the voice. I sang more "on the

breath."

HINES: Then, when we sang at La Scala, and you had this caprino

sound ... ?

CORELLI: I sang that deep, low way, with much breath in the

mouth.

HINES: Now, let's discuss the role the imagination plays in singing.

Franco Corelli

CORELLI: Basically, it is the brain that commands. With the

thought one forros the voice. But on the stage there are so many

things to think about: you have to move, interpret, follow the con

ductor and follow the words. In spite of ali this you still have to

control the sound.

BINES: Then one should strive not to be a slave to technique when

perf orming.

CORELLI: But technique does not come only from thinking about

making a sweet, beautiful note. You must also think sweet with the

technique. These things are tied together. Certainly you do not

think of technique when you sing in the middle range. But instead,

when you sing "Vincerol Vincerol" from Turandot, you think-and

how you think-about ''vincero.'' You put yourself in position to take

a good breath, all of your mind concentrates on dominating your

throat . . . the color of the note . . . each thing related to every

thing else ... and you think, "Now I'll let you hear a note." It isn't

bue that one can always be completely free from techniquel Only

when there's something easy to sing, you needn't think.

When the voice is placed right, singing is like walking. You don't

usually think when you walk, but if you are climbing the stairs,
you'd better pay attention to the steps, or you'll fall.

At this point in the interview, we arrived at our destination and

our thoughts turned to other things.

Everyone knows about the glorious, emotion-packed career of

Franco Corelli. In 1976, at the height of his vocal prowess, he

dropped out of public sight. Toe terrible emotional price of deliver

ing those sparkling, high-tension performances had temporarily ex

hausted Franco, and he found it more pleasant to relax and let the

rest of us knock ourselves out doing our thing. Everyone would be

overjoyed to see him return to the opera stage again.

In June of 1g80 Franco did a great favor for Lucia ( my wife is

the chairman of the New Jersey State Opera's annual hall) by sing

ing two numbers at her grandiose affair. The result was a pandemo

nium of joy from the audience as they heard the Franco Corelli of

old, bis beauty and power of voice undiminished.

68

Franco C orelli

The night after the hall I rejoined the Met on tour in Boston.

Word had spread fast, and the management met me with the

impassioned plea: How can we get him?

Cross your fingers.

Since the writing of this interview, Franco has begun doing select, triumphant

performances in places such as the New Jersey State Arts Center in Holmdel.

Relax your crossed fingers. It's working.