Born in Genoa and trained at La Scala, Benelli had an international career singing leading tenore di grazia roles from the early 1960s through the 1980s.
[4] Benelli went on to make house debuts at a number of other major European and North American opera houses and festivals, including the Glyndebourne Festival, where he made his debut in 1967 as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore and returned in subsequent years as Narciso in Il turco in Italia (1970), Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville and Trouffaldino in The Love for Three Oranges (1982), and Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro (1984).
When Benelli made his debut at London's Royal Opera House singing Ernesto in Don Pasquale in 1974, the English critic Harold Rosenthal wrote, "Mr Benelli's Ernesto was the best I remember in the theatre, and except for the classic Tito Schipa performance on records, the best sung I have ever heard.
In 2002, Giorgio De Martino's biography of Benelli, Cantanti, vil razza dannata, was published by Zecchini in their series I racconti della musica.
[10] His last appearance onstage, in a praised "cameo" as Don Basilio, took place at the Teatro Carlo Felice in his native city in 2004, when he was about 69.