Renato Zanelli (née Renato Zanelli Morales) was born in Valparaiso, Chile, on 1 April 1892, by an Italian father and Chilean mother. It was a wealthy family and at the age of two only he was sent to boarding schools in Switzerland and Italy. He returned to Chile in 1911 for his military service and to do office work in his father's salpeter factory in Valparaiso. At a social party his voice was discovered by Angelo Querzé, an Italian tenor who had sung at the local premiere of Otello in Chile. Zanelli was advised to take up singing professionally and Querzé became his vocal tutor for the next three years.

In September 1916 he debuted as a baritone at the opera of Santiago de Chile, in the role of Valentino from Gounoud's Faust, and the following year he appeared as Il Conte Di Luna (Trovatore) and Tonio (Pagliacci) at the opera of Montevideo, Uruguay, roles which he repeated in Santiago and Valparaiso in September the same year. In 1918, probably encouraged by Querzé, he left for New York where he met the famous Spanish bass Andrés Perelló de Segurola. Segurola was a friend of Querzé, and a concert tour displaying the young singer's talent was organized. The tour ended in an audition for the general manager at the Met, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, who seemed thrilled at the discovery of this new singer: Zanelli was engaged on the spot and included in the staff of such renowned singers as Pasquale Amato (1878-1942), Giuseppe de Luca (1876-1950) and Antonio Scotti (1866-1936). A week after, he signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Co. to make 20 records. He was 27.

The actual debut at the Met took place on November 19, 1919, in the part of Amonasro in Aida. He was partnered by no other than Claudia Muzio, Gabriella Besanzoni and Giovanni Martinelli. In the next 4 years he sang opposite such celebrated singers as Caruso (Pagliacci, La Forza del Destino) and Martinelli, and he also appeared in guest performances at the summer opera of Ravinia, as well as appearing in Chicago and singing with the Scotti Opera Company, performing in Carmen, Faust, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, La Gioconda and La Traviata. At the Met he was seen mainly in Il Trovatore and Faust, but also performed in the rarely performed opera Le Coq d'Or by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Although his recordings sold well, he was never one of the top-ranking baritones at the Met, and his most spectacular successes during these years were won in South America. Zanelli's younger brother, under the name of Carlo Morelli (1897-1970), had a more substantial career as a baritone in New York than did his brother. Thus there seems to have been a certain dissatisfaction on part of Zanelli with the opportunities in New York. Apparently the well-established Italian baritones at the Met - Scotti, De Luca and Amato, and eventually Danise, Ruffo, Ballester and Laurenti - opposed to him so strongly that Gatti-Casazza became reluctant with giving him roles that his Italian baritones would normally fill.¹

Zanelli's baritone voice was somewhat light and with an easy top, registerwise. It must have struck him that he was possibly singing in the wrong register and Toscanini himself hinted that he should consider changing from baritone to tenor. With the scope of his possibilities at the Met as a baritone, his did not renew his contract with the house and Zanelli sang his last performance as a baritone in an open air recital in Central Park, New York, late 1923. The legendary Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli sang the Otello excerpts with him.

He did not perform publicly for a whole year. And when he finally did, on 28 October 1924, it was as Alfredo in La Traviata at Napoli's Politeama Giacosa. Zanelli had spent the year in Italy retraining his voice under the renowned teachers Lari and Tenara. His second performance as tenor came at the same theatre in November, and somewhat surprisingly for a former baritone, the role was Raoul in Meyerbeer's Gli Ugonotti, with its merciless tessitura.²

In 1925 he appeared in La Fanciulla del West, Il Trovatore, Tosca and Norma. Then in Napoli, he prepared with the legendary Napolitean conductor Leopoldo Mugnone³ what were to become his signature character: Otello. He embarked on a golden career as one of the finest Otellos of his time, with the debut performance in Torino at the Politeama Chiarella on 3 November 1925, then Egypt in 1927, Monte Carlo during the 1927-28 season and the highly successful performances in 1928 at the theaters of Parma and Piacenza. His Otello was now of such consideration that he was forced to perform the role at nearly all opera houses of importance.

Shortly after his first Otello, in 1926, he had appeared in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, adding Canio and Nerone to his repertory, and returning to Italy, he performed in Lohengrin and Mefistofele at Milano's Teatro del Verme. His Wagner was well received and in 1927 he repeated the success with Lohengrin in Parma.

Some of his finest moments came at the Covent Garden in London in 1928 and 1930 as Otello, where he was likened with Tamagno's Otello, for whom Verdi once had created the role. One critic wrote about one of his performances that "he has as much vitality as the rest of the cast put together." When he then returned to Chile in 1928, he came home as a singer of world renown and he treated the home audience with his celebrated Otello at the Municipal in Santiago, where he also sang Lohengrin, Pagliacci, Carmen and the first performance of Tristano e Isotta in Chile, also the first time Zanelli sang that role.

In the 1929-30 season he was engaged at Rome's Teatro Reale dell'Opera to sing in Otello, La Walkiria, La Forza del Destino, Tristano e Isotta and the world premiere of Ildebrando Pizetti's Lo Straniero. Then finally, he was invited to sing at La Scala in the local premiere of Lo Straniero in December 1930, and he also sang Tristano e Isotta, now consolidating himself as a Heldentenor of rank. He returned to La Scala in 1931 to sing La Rosa di Saron by Adriano Lualdi. He never performed Otello at La Scala, though, the only theatre in Milano that was bestowed with the honour of displaying Tamagno's successor was the Teatro Dal Verme in September 1931. The Iago of the occasion happened to be his brother, Carlo Morelli.

On the threshold of his golden years, recognized as one of the world's finest dramatic tenors, he began to suffer from kidney ailments, later diagnosed as cancer, and his health gradually deteriorated. However, he held sway in Italy during 1932 and continued his Wagner cycle with Tristano at La Scala and in Roma and La Walkiria in Parma. Then in 1932 he left Europe for South-America and starred in Pizzetti's Debora e Jaele at the Colón in Buenos Aires in May 1933. He also sang in Norma, before returning to Chile and the Municipal of Santiago and what was to be his last season, performing in Andrea Chenier, Tosca, Trovatore, Pagliacci, Mefistofele and Aida.

Santiago saw his last two performances of Otello, on the 12th and 15th of October 1933 and his last performance was a recital given in Osorno only a few days later, on the 25th. He was scheduled for a concert tour in the US in 1934 and flew over in February, but most likely he never gave any performances due to the advanced state of his illness and returned to Chile. Here he died shortly after surgery on 25 March 1935, one week short of his 43rd birthday.

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Zanelli had a powerful and big, full-bodied voice, dark, baritonal (which was its true nature), with a golden timbre and exceptional legato. Although his recorded legacy is scarce and incomplete, the material he did leave behind reveals a tragedian of high distinction in the dramatic tenor repertory (Otello), but at the same time he displays a warm tone and a developed sense of musical line and rhythm. Despite considered as one of the finest Heldentenors of his time, little recorded material from his many Wagner performances are known. He had a good upper register, but the dark hue of his tone was ever-present, leading critics in England upon his first reviews as Otello to report of a "forced-up baritone."

With special thanks to Juan Dzazópulos for valuable comments.