Ugo Benelli

Ugo Benelli (born 20 January 1935) is an Italian operatic tenor. Born in Genoa and trained at La Scala, Benelli had an international career singing leading tenore di grazia roles from the early 1960s through the 1980s. In his later years he sang character roles and began a career as a singing teacher. He retired from the stage in 2004.

Benelli was born in Genoa where his father and grandfather worked as hat makers. He studied singing in Milan with Pietro Magenta and then won a scholarship to La Scala's training school for young singers where he studied under Giulio Confalonieri and Ettore Campogalliani. He began his singing career in Montevideo in 1958 in Salieri's comic intermezzo Arlecchinata while on a tour of Latin America with the chamber opera company, Opera da Camera di Milano. In 1960 he began singing at the Teatro della Piccola Scala (La Scala's chamber theatre) and then at Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu as Fenton in Verdi's Falstaff which he considers to be his official debut. He was then engaged to sing on the main stage at La Scala, first in the small role of Brighella in Ariadne auf Naxos in 1963, and then in the leading role of Giocondo in La pietra del paragone in the 1967 season. He returned to La Scala in 13 more productions between 1967 and 1999 as well as giving a solo concert of bel canto tenor arias in 1976 with Pierluigi Urbini conducting the La Scala Orchestra.

Benelli went on to make house debuts at a number of other major European and North American opera houses and festivals, including the Glyndebourne Festival where he made his debut in 1967 as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore and returned in subsequent years as Narciso in Il turco in Italia (1970), Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia and Trouffaldino in L'Amour des trois oranges (1982), and Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro (1984). In addition to his Glyndebourne debut, 1967 saw Benelli's house debuts at La Fenice as Filipeto in I quatro rusteghi and the Teatro San Carlo as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore.

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