City. Through the years, he has coached Metropolitan Opera singers Thomas Hampson, Suzanna Guzman, tenor Raul Hernandez, and many others. He also coached actress and Jazz singer Bettina Devin of the movie Rent, Franc D'Ambrosio of The Godfather Part III fame, TV and stage star Nancy Dussault, Broadway singing actresses Lisa Vroman, Aneka Noni Rose, Rachel Eskenazi-Gold, Karen Morrow, and the Tony Award-winning Dame Edna. Singing Negrini made his singing debut at age 15, as Dr. Malatesta in a production of Don Pasquale mounted by a small company known as L'Opera Comique of Los Angeles that was founded by his father. At the age of 17, he made his tenor debut as Paolino in USC Opera's production of Il Matrimonio Segreto. Soon afterward, at age 19, he became a finalist in the 1980 Lyric Opera of Chicago auditions. There, he was mentored by Walter Baracchi, the noted pianist-conductor who had been with Lyric Opera of Chicago for a decade, and previously with Milan's La Scala since the late 1950s. This launched a professional singing career for Negrini. In Chicago, he would go on to share the stage, and learn from Luciano Pavarotti, Mirella Freni, Alfredo Kraus, Jon Vickers, and scores of other notables. Among his most successful performances were his portrayal of the "rock star" Nanki-Poo in Peter Sellars's updated production of The Mikado, and his rendition of Don Ramiro in the Gian-Carlo Menotti production of La Cenerentola at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. – a role he would eventually perform over 100 times with many different opera companies. During this period he also performed the role of David in Die Meistersinger with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf. He made history at Lyric Opera of Chicago when in 1982, at the age of 21, he replaced Gösta Winbergh as Ferrando in Così fan tutte, making him the youngest tenor ever to sing a leading role there.[1] Negrini has also been a finalist in the 1984 San Francisco Opera Auditions, where he was a member of the Merola Opera Program. In the late 1980s, while continuing to sing throughout the United States, in such roles as Hoffmann in The Tales of Hoffmann, Lord Percy in Anna Bolena and Dick Johnson in La fanciulla del West, he was approached by Hal Prince to re-create the role of Ubaldo Piangi in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera for