Photos © FOTO TRONCONE, Napoli
OPERA MAGAZINE
OPERA MAGAZINE
COMPLETE RECORDING
Recording Excerpts [1962.01.13]
Franco Corelli started his 1961/62 season after his duties at the Arena in Verona in October 1961 with Il Trovatore when the Rome Opera House gave some performances in Berlin, surrounded by Mirella Parutto, Fedora Barbieri, and Ettore Bastianini. He performed Manrico also for the inaugurazione of the Teatro Nuovo di Torino, this time with Margherita Roberti, again Fedora Barbieri, and Dino Dondi. Next came a Tosca at the Barcelona Teatro del Liceo with Luisa Maragliano and Piero Cappuccilli, before he starred at the La Scala opening in La battaglia di Legnano with Antonietta Stella and Ettore Bastianini. After Milan he spent one night at Nice, France, for a Tosca with Christiane Castelli and José Faggianelli. Franco Corelli's Calàf was already considered as one of his greatest impersonations when he joined the Teatro di San Carlo at Naples for this new production, having sung the part in many of the world's greatest opera houses and especially in the historic 1961 Metropolitan Opera production conducted by Leopold Stokowski and with Birgit Nilsson and Anna Moffo as his partners. The San Carlo had assembled a strong supporting cast for his divo.
Lucille Udovich was American by birth (1920) but spent the best part of her important career in Italy. After some years in the Italian provinces the soprano had her break-through as Agnese di Hohenstaufen at the 1953 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. This brought her many important engagements in the leading theatres in Italy and at the Glyndebourne Festival. In 1958 she starred as Turandot in the filmed RAI production with Franco Corelli, Renata Mattioli, and Plinio Clabassi. She appeared also at London's Royal Opera, Bruxelles, Amsterdam, and through all the French provincial companies. In her homeland she appeared at the Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Philadelphia Lyric and Grand Opera companies. Her only official recording seems to be the Glyndebourne Festival recording of Mozart's Idomeneo with Sena Jurinac, Léopold Simoneau, and Richard Lewis, John Pritchard conducting. For the RAI, she recorded Britten's Peter Grimes with Mirto Picchi, Piero Guelfi, and Plinio Clabassi under Fernando Previtali in 1956. In 1964 Udovich recorded also La Gioconda with Anna Maria Rota, Anna Di Stasio, Daniele Barioni, Mario Sereni, and Plinio Clabassi, under Oliviero de Fabritiis. She retired in the midseventies and died in 1999.
LEYLA GENCER doesn't need much introduction as she is universally regarded as one of the most important singers during 1950 and 1980, and her career is well known. It seems that this Liù is the only surviving recording of her impersonation.
After these Naples Turandot, Corelli went again to America to sing in Aida, Turandot, and La Gioconda at the Met, and in Tosca and Carmen at the Philadelphia Lyric Opera, this last opera with the then unknown Marilyn Horne as the gypsy. May saw Corelli returning for Milan's La Scala for more Turandot with Birgit Nilsson and Amy Shuard alternating as Turandot, and Mirella Freni and Rosanna Carteri sharing the Liùs, before he starred as Raoul in the now legendary revival of Meyerbeer's Gli Ugonotti with Joan Sutherland, Giulietta Simionato, Fiorenza Cossotto, Vladimiro Ganzarolli, Giorgio Tozzi, and Nicolai Ghiaurov. Fiorenza Cossotto was also his Carmen in June at the Venice Teatro La Fenice before Corelli went to the Salzburg Festival to appear in another production which has since become almost mythical, Verdi's Il Trovatore with Leontyne Price, Giulietta Simionato, Ettore Bastianini, and Nicola Zaccaria, produced and conducted by that Maestrissimo, Herbert von Karajan. Just one season in the career of Franco Corelli....
