If it talks like a duck, sings like a duck and sounds like a duck... it can still be a tenor.
Born in Orlando, Florida, to Venezuelan immigrants, Carlos Santelli studied voice in Oberlin, Ann Arbor and Baton Rouge. He started his career
in 2016 at the Los Angeles Opera in small roles. From 2017, he sang (mostly) main roles in places like Dayton, Honolulu, San Diego, San
Antonio, Memphis, Minneapolis, Orlando, Rochester, Milwaukee, Boise or Amarillo, and comprimario parts again in Houston: Roméo, Tybalt,
Nemorino, Tonio (La fille du régiment), Don Ramiro, and above all Almaviva. In 2018, he was a Metropolitan Opera National
Council Auditions prize winner.
Obviously, Santelli himself was not entirely convinced of his singing that combines the peculiar sound of Stefan Zucker with a very ordinary Spanish quiver – he drastically reduced the number of appearances as early as 2023,
so as to pass on his fabulous technique to future generations and work as an assistant professor of voice at the University of Memphis.
Reference 1 and picture source, reference 2, reference 3: Santelli's website; reference
4
