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. Life and career 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,