Herbert von Karajan described Franco Corelli best when he said: "above all a voice of thunder and lightning, fire and blood." He was the most viscerally thrilling and handsome tenor of the post WWII generation.

Corelli studied in Rossini's home town of Pesaro and made his debut in 1951 as Don Jose in Carmen. At first his voice was 'short' without the essential top 'C' demanded by much of the romantic and modern tenor repertoire. Through sheer determination (and some study with Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, possessor of a thrilling high 'C' in his day) Corelli built the upper extension of his voice note by note.

His career was almost exclusively in opera but he sang a wide variety of Italian and French roles, from the pure lyric to the most thrilling spinto characters. He first sang with Maria Callas in 1953 and made his La Scala debut with her in 1954 in Norma. London first saw him in 1957 in Tosca with Zinka Milanov and his Metropolitan Opera debut was one of the legendary nights in that house when he and Leontyne Price both made their debut on the same cold January night in Il Trovatore. The ovations at the end of the performance carried on for nearly an hour.

Corelli retired from the stage in 1976 but has left much of his important repertoire on disc.