Spending Time With Legendary Tenor Franco Corelli Pt. 4

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One technical issue that Corelli mentioned more than once dealt with vocal registers. He drove home the necessity for the tenor make the passaggio (“covering” the voice) on F or F sharp—occasional “artistic” exceptions notwithstanding. The common mistake of tenors’ making the passaggio on higher notes (e.g., G or G sharp) was, for him a technical and artistic blemish, and one that could undermine the very health of the tenor voice. More than one great tenor (he mentioned Guiseppe Di Stefano) lost their technical and artistic excellence by not abiding by this rule. He said that all singers—bass, baritone, tenor, mezzosoprano, and soprano—must live by the same technical principle and make their passaggio on the right note/s for their vocal categories.

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Spending Time With legendary Tenor Franco Corelli Pt. 3

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Additional evidence for the limited effectiveness of Corelli’s approach to voice teaching came ten years later when I began to teach one of his students, popular Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli (at that time Andrea was, technically, still a student of Corelli’s). In our first session, I was surprised to discover the extent to which Bocelli’s voice was underdeveloped. For instance, he could barely sustain a full-voiced pure ee vowel on middle C, while holding the vowel in the back of his throat. Considering Corelli’s own large, brilliant, and “back” ee vowel, Bocelli’s muted, small, and nasalized ee vowel, by contrast, made little sense. And that’s not all. All of Bocelli’s vowels were small and only partially developed (formed in his throat) and, as a result, were diminutive by operatic standards. I was baffled.

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Spending Time With Legendary Tenor Franco Corelli Pt. 2

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In our discussion about the open throat, Corelli continually made the point— apparently echoing his erstwhile teacher Arturo Melocchi’s own view— that lowering the larynx to a significant degree, and expanding the throat cavity maximally in the process, as an essential element of one’s singing technique, a la Caruso (and himself), was not for everyone (according to Corelli, he only had minimum instruction from Melocchi, but did study extensively with one of his students). Corelli believed that lowering the larynx in an extreme way, as a foundation to one’s vocal technique, could be a “dangerous” maneuver if the student practicing it possessed a naturally delicate vocal instrument, or if the technique was applied too aggressively.

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Spending Time With Legendary Tenor Franco Corelli Pt. 1

In 1990, I went to visit with none other than one of my idols, Franco Corelli, at his flat in Manhattan. As I walked off the elevator of his floor, I went into momentary shock when I saw a tall, elegant man with his back to me, fiddling with a noisy set of keys and struggling to find the one that would fit into the keyhole of a door. Still strikingly handsome and lean for a man his age (69 years old at the time of my visit), Corelli turned, smiled, and walked toward me, and with characteristic Italian warmth and charm, said in a big voice, “Ciao Gary, come stai? How are you?” With my heart pounding almost out of my chest, I managed a slightly affected, “I am fine Franco, thank you for seeing me.” I had hardly been aware that he had been shaking my hand energetically all the while.

Over the next hour and a half, we vocalized (his voice was still huge and reverberated with squillo—metallic ring), exchanged ideas about the art of singing, and discussed the open throat, lowered larynx controversy. What a mindblowing opportunity it was for me to have the chance to learn from an artist whom many lovers of the art form consider the greatest tenor since Enrico Caruso!

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Face Your Singing Limitations: Voice Building With Seal

Whenever I teach, I am always listening intensely to try to hear how a vocal quality may vary from note to note, from vowel to vowel, from throat position to throat position. But aside from gaining more technical understanding about how to build a voice, I also have learned a great deal from my student’s own experiences.

One of my students, pop singer Seal, for example, once pointed out to me an interesting phenomenon of which I had been aware but to which I had never given much thought: singers often construct their personal singing techniques and style around their vocal limitations. For instance, many singers, often unconsciously, avoid specific vowel sounds and notes that they cannot produce well. The "ee" vowel, for example, is notoriously difficult to sing strongly, so the vowel is frequently modified or changed to a vowel sound that resembles it, such as an "eh" sound.

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