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Enrico Caruso
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| Enrico Caruso, was the most celebrated and sought after singer of his time, and possibly the greatest tenor of the century.
Born in Naples in 1873, he was the fifteenth out of twenty-one children and the first to get past infancy. His early musical and general education was given by the church where he sang as a choir boy in his beloved Naples. Finding a voice teacher proved almost impossible, as each teacher told him that he had neither voice nor talent! Fortunately, Caruso had the determination to persuade a celebrated Neapolitan teacher to allow him to sit in on other students' lessons. By doing this he was able to learn a basic vocal technique and was eventually given lessons on his own. His début took place on March 15th 1895 performing a role in a now totally forgotten opera, L'Amico Francesco. This was in one of the many back street theatres in Naples. During the first few years he had vocal difficulties especially with his top notes. It took him some time to secure this part of his voice. For his first engagement as Rodolfo in La Bohème the condition of his contract was that he must get approval from Puccini himself. After Caruso had sung a few pages, Puccini leapt from the piano saying "Who sent you to me? God!" Puccini never forgot the thrill of hearing that voice for the first time. But there was still the problem of the top C, in his first aria, 'Che gelida manina'. Puccini transposed the aria down a semitone, thus solving the problem. Even for his début at La Scala Milan in 1902 under the baton of Toscanini, Caruso still had to transpose the aria. The quality and artistry of the young Caruso set the operatic world alight. A new star had arrived and the world wanted to hear him. This coincided with the development of the gramophone as a serious instrument of entertainment. One of its leading recording engineers, Fred Gaisberg, happened to be in Milan in February 1902 and heard the almost unknown tenor at La Scala. He asked him to record ten records the next day. His fee was 100 gns, which Gaisberg's London directors thought too high. Those first ten records were to earn the Gramophone Company millions over the next fifty years. Caruso made his début at Covent Garden as the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto in 1903, followed a few months later by his début at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. For the next seventeen years he was to sing in Europe during the spring and autumn, and with the Met. every winter. Wherever he sang he was received with thunderous applause by the audience and high critical acclaim by the press. He was a totally committed and accomplished professional. During one of his performances of La Bohème the bass lost his voice just before his famous Coat Song. Caruso sang the aria for him facing upstage, while the bass mimed. He performed in thirty-seven different operas at the Met and recorded more than 260 titles, which display the development of his voice from the lyrical quality of his 1904 'Una furtiva lagrima' to the dramatic baritonal timbre of 'Rachel, quand du Seigneur', recorded in 1920. Caruso died at the height of his career, aged forty-eight, in 1921, but the legacy he has left is so remarkable that with the help of new technology we can again fully appreciate the magnificence of a tenor whose name has become synonymous with greatness. |
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