Enrico Caruso

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For the song "Caruso" by Lucio Dalla, see Caruso (song).
Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso
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Enrico Caruso
Years active 1895-1921
Genres Opera

Enrico Caruso (February 25, 1873–August 2, 1921) was an Italian opera singer and one of the most famous tenors in history. Caruso was also the most popular singer in any genre in the first twenty years of the twentieth century and one of the pioneers of recorded music. Caruso's popular recordings and his extraordinary voice, known for its range, power, and beauty, made him one of the best-known stars of his time.

During his career, he made nearly 260 recordings and made millions of dollars from the sale of his 78 rpm records. While Caruso sang at many of the world's great opera houses including La Scala in Milan and Covent Garden in London, he is best known as the leading male singer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for seventeen years. Conductor Arturo Toscanini, who conducted some of the operas that Caruso sang in at the Met, considered him one of the greatest artists he had ever worked with.

Caruso was baptized in the Church of San Giovanni e Paolo on February 26, 1873, having been born in Naples, Italy, one day earlier. He began his career in Naples in 1894. The first major role that he created was Loris in Giordano's Fedora, at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, on November 17, 1898. At that same theater, on November 6, 1902, he created the role of Maurizio in Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur.

In 1903, with the help of his agent, the banker Pasquale Simonelli, he went to New York City, and, on November 23 of that year, he made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. The following year Caruso began his lifelong association with the Victor Talking-Machine Company; his star relationships with both the Metropolitan and Victor would last until 1920.

Caruso was one of the first star vocalists to make numerous recordings. He and the disc phonograph did much to promote each other in the first two decades of the 20th century. His 1902 recording of Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci was the world's first gramophone record to sell a million copies. Many of Caruso's recordings have remained in print since their original issue a century ago.

On December 10, 1910, he starred at the Met as Dick Johnson in the world premiere of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West. His last performance at the Met was as Eléazar in Halévy's La Juive on December 24, 1920.

Caruso died in 1921, from what is thought to be complications of pleurisy, apparently not diagnosed in time to save him. He was 48. He is buried in Naples.

Caruso was portrayed by Mario Lanza in a highly fictionalized Hollywood motion picture, The Great Caruso, in 1951.

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[edit] Trivia

  • Caruso performed in Carmen in San Francisco in front of thousands the night before the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Caruso was staying at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco when the earthquake struck. His eyewitness account can be seen here.
  • Since his death, numerous compilation albums of his work have been created. Certain recordings of his were predominantly used in Woody Allen's Match Point. His recording of O Paradiso is a key part of the play "Awake and Sing" by Clifford Odets.
  • At a performance of Puccini's La Boheme, the basso onstage lost his voice and Caruso reputedly began to sing his aria "Vecchia zimarra" while the basso mouthed the song. His performance was so appreciated he even went to record it but later asked for it to be destroyed. This recording has recently been rediscovered [citation needed].
  • According to the website Daily Rotten, on November 16, 1906, Caruso was "charged with an indecent act committed in the monkey house of New York's Central Park Zoo. He pinched the bottom of a woman described as 'pretty and plump', causing outrage amongst New York high society. Caruso claimed a monkey pinched the lady's bottom."

[edit] Repertoire

Caruso's repertoire was the following:

Caruso also had a repertoire of some 521 songs, ranging from classical to traditional Italian folk songs and popular songs of the day.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Pietro Gargano Una vita una leggenda, Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori, 1997;
  • Riccardo Vaccaro Caruso, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995;
  • Pietro Gargano/Gianni Cesarini Caruso, Vita e arte di un grande cantante, Longanesi, 1990;
  • Caruso/Farkas Enrico Caruso My father and my family, Amadeus, 1990 with Discography by William Moran and Chronology by Tom Kaufman;
  • Michael Scott The Great Caruso, London and New York, 1988 with Chronology by Tom Kaufman;
  • Jackson S., Caruso, First edition, New York, Stein and Day, 1972;
  • Key P. V. R., Zirato B., Enrico Caruso. A Biography, Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, 1922;
  • Il Progresso italo americano, Il banchiere [1] che portò Caruso [2]negli USA [3], sezione B - supplemento illustrato della domenica, New York, 27 luglio 1986;
  • Wagenmann J. H. , Enrico Caruso und das Problem der Stimmbildung, (Altenburg, 1911).

[edit] Media

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Over There A recording of the popular American World War I song.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Literature

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