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MARIO DEL MONACO, 42, has, over the years, built an unwholesome reputation succinctly summed up by Soprano Joan Sutherland when she recently canceled a performance with him. Del Monaco was, said she, "far too noisy a tenor." It is true that Del Monaco, who began his singing career in the Italian army and made his big-time debut at Covent Garden, likes to shout down the opposition, and that he is often tight and rasping in the middle and lower registers. But his top register can be glorious, and he often makes up in sheer strength and virility for what he lacks in sensuous sound or vocal finesse. He is at his best in such stentorian roles as Manrico in // Trovatore and the title role of Ernani, and his brilliant Otello is one of the great interpretations of present-day opera.
FRANCO CORELLI, 37, has risen so rapidly that in Italy he is nicknamed "the Sputnik Tenor." One reason is that he has a classically handsome head set on a 6-ft.
2-in., 185-lb. frame (his other Italian nickname is "Golden Calves"); another is that he can sing superbly (withdrawal from the Met spared Del Monaco the challenge of sharing the house with him).
Trained as a naval engineer, Corelli did not start studying singing until he was 24, learned most of what he knows by listening to recordings of famous singers. His professional career was begun "by pure good luck" when he got the chance to sing opposite Maria Callas in Spontini's La Vestale on a La Scala opening night.
For a while Corelli's extracurricular antics—he punched a spectator he thought had insulted him, stabbed Basso Boris Christoff with a stage sword—drew attention away from his sizable gifts as a singer. His large, solid dramatic tenor is darker than most, has almost a baritone's quality; at his best Corelli uses it with an animal vitality and drive that leave no audience bored. In Italy bobby-soxers periodically mob him at the stage door, and there is every evidence that he may do for tenors what Ezio Pinza did for bassos. Says he: "I attract mostly young, very beautiful girls."