WATCH: Late Italian Tenor Renato Cioni, Still Singing in His Eighties (with Great Audio from an Even Older Giovanni Martinelli)

A lovely little video has turned up on YouTube, featuring the leading Italian tenor Renato Cioni, who died very recently.

Click here to read Classicalite's earlier tribute to one of Maria Callas' leading men.

And keep reading to watch Cioni, in his early eighties, still singing...

Other tenors have gone on as long, or nearly.

Nicolai Gedda and Alfredo Kraus both continued well into their seventies.

Giovanni Martinelli made a cameo appearance at an advanced age, also his early eighties, as the Emperor in Puccini's Turandot (an opera he once all but dominated as the Calaf of his day, and moreover, the tenor Puccini asked for to create that role; the Met wouldn't release him).

So, to add to that Cioni treat, here is some delightful audio of Martinelli (aged 81 at the time) talking about and then performing the Emperor, in Seattle, in 1967.