He was particularly renowned for his Mozart and Rossini roles, and notably those of Don Alfonso in Cosi fan tutte and the Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro. Calabrese appeared in this latter role in the noted 1955 recording, with Sesto Bruscanini, Graziella Sciuti and the Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra, under the baton of Vittorio Gui.
After retiring from singing, he taught stagecraft at the same Boccherini Institute in Lucca, where his students included, among others, Graziano Polidori, Giancarlo Ceccarini, Francesco Facini and Enrico Facini.
↑Verdi, Giuseppe; Moffo, Anna; Tucker, Richard; Merrill, Robert; Reynolds, Anna; Previtali, Fernando (1999), La traviata, Teatro dell'opera (Rome, Italy), New York, NY: RCA, retrieved 2021-06-16