Although primarily associated with Italian-language comic roles, Corbelli’s résumé shows his wide-ranging interests and versatility, including French and German roles (Sulpice in Donizetti's La fille du regiment, Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte), Baroque opera (Seneca in Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea) and a twentieth-century English-language opera (Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake's Progress).
He was a member of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, from 1976 to 1986, singing such roles as Albert in Werther, the Animal Tamer in the British premiere of the three-act version of Lulu, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Ford in Falstaff, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly and Marcello in La bohème.
Perhaps his best movie roles were as a resistance man (De røde Enge - “The Red Meadows", 1945), and as the soldier in Soldaten og Jenny, ("The Soldier and Jenny", 1947. His ability as a singer even made him opera roles (Papageno in The Magic Flute) and though normally considered a typical “man of the people” he also mastered the role as a man of the world.