[4] Born in Anagni, a small town southeast of Rome, Coletti started his career singing baritone coloratura roles in Rossini, Donizetti and Mercadante operas before moving on to vocally substantial Verdi repertory.

"[10] Filippo Andrea Francesco Coletti was born on 11 May 1811 in Anagni, a medieval town located east-southeast of Rome, in the district of Frosinone.

With Filippo Coletti's singing fees which were administered by his father Venanzio, the family moved into a large property outside Anagni in 1843.

[b] In 1845 the 33-year-old Coletti married the seventeen-year-old Maria, daughter of Anagni's town clerk (Segretario comunale) Giovanni Ambrosi.

[c] Coletti started his musical education in Rome, then moved to the Naples Real Collegio di Musica, where he studied with the tenor Alessandro Busti, a pupil of the castrato Girolamo Crescenti.

[e] Coletti transferred to the neighboring Teatro San Carlo, where he sang coloratura and bel canto roles in Vincenzo Bellini's La straniera (Valdeburgo), Rossini's Mosè in Egitto, Maometto II and Semiramide (Assur),[f] as well as Giuseppe Curci's cantata Ruggiero, in January 1835.

[g] Beyond Naples, Coletti appeared in the Carlo Felice in Genoa in the 1835–1836 season, sang in Donizetti's Gemma di Vergy at the Teatro Valle in Rome, and in Bellini's I puritani in Padova (1836).

[25] A four-year engagement at the Real Teatro de São Carlos in Lisbon (1837–40) included the first Lisbon production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, operas by the Ricci brothers,[h] Saverio Mercadante, Giuseppe Persiani and Ferdinand Hérold as well as the title roles of Donizetti's Torquato Tasso (January 1837) and Marin Faliero, Prospero Salsapariglia in Donizetti's Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali and the role of Visconti in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda.

[27] Pierre Laporte, the impresario of Her Majesty's Theatre in London, engaged the talented but unknown Coletti as replacement for the public's idol, the baritone Antonio Tamburini, (1800–1876).

[33] Coletti sang Donizetti's Torquato Tasso and Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda in La Scala in 1841, creating there the role of Edmondo in Otto Nicolai's Il Proscritto (1841).

[34] After creating the title role of Pacini's Duca d'Alba in Teatro La Fenice (1842) in Venice, Coletti moved to Naples, where he would remain till 1846 as San Carlo's leading baritone.

[41] Following star-baritone Tamburini's defection to Covent Garden, Coletti returned to Her Majesty's Theatre, hired by Laporte's successor, Benjamin Lumley.

Lumley chose Verdi's Nabucco "in order to introduce Coletti, who appeared in the part of the maddened king (previously so effectively sustained by Fornasari), and was welcomed with enthusiasm.

Verdi now offered his "Masnadieri", composed upon the subject of Schiller's well-known play, "Die Räuber", and with this proposal I was obliged to close.

[45] Coletti remained present in London until 1850, singing diverse roles in the Italian baritone repertoire, performing in Linda di Chamounix, I Puritani, L'elisir d'amore, and most notably the Doge in Verdi's I due Foscari.

[49] In Rome Coletti sang Rigoletto in 1851, (the opera given under the censured title 'Viscardello'), I due Foscari, Un ballo in maschera (T. Apollo, 1854) and I vespri siciliani (T. Argentina, 1856).

[m] In the season 1861–1862 Coletti, no longer first choice in Italy, found work in the Teatro Real, Madrid, singing in Donizetti and Verdi operas as well as Achille Peri's Giuditta.

[56] In Naples he created his last new role – Appio Claudio in Errico Petrella's Virginia; But Coletti's voice had deteriorated to the extent that he was forced into retirement.

[n] Coletti attempted a brief comeback in 1867, singing the bass role of Mefistofeles in Gounod's Faust in Palermo, earning applause and a polite review.

In his obituary, The Musical Times of 1 August 1894 said of Coletti: "he is also memorable as the sole performer in whom Carlyle saw any merit on his famous visit to the opera".

[62] Philosopher and writer Thomas Carlyle: "One singer in particular, called Coletti or some such name, seemed to me, by the cast of his face, by the tones of his voice, by his general bearing, so far as I could read it, to be a man of deep and ardent sensibilities, of delicate intuitions, just sympathies; originally an almost poetic soul, or man of genius, as we term it;"[s] Italian opera composer Giovanni Pacini, from his Memoires: "The celebrated Coletti in the role I entrusted him was not able to be surpassed by any other artist.

– are a want of colour in his expression, a monotony in the form of his cadences, and a method of reaching the high notes, which belongs to a bad school of singing.

"[t] Lexicographer Francesco Regli[67] writes: "One observes with great astonishment the ease with which he executed the most difficult of roles, dramatic as well as those of agility, the extraordinary extension of his voice and the colour that is so indispensable in the various characters in the music.