|
|
Enrico Caruso
|
     | |||
| It cannot be wondered at that the career of Enrico Caruso has become the stuff of enduring public nostalgia, apocryphal distortions, and movie spectacle.
His was not only a story of enormous romance, rising as he did from the poverty of Naples' back streets to great wealth, artistic supremacy and the friendship of princes; his was the voice upon which the nascent recording industry relied for its initial coups, the voice which thus became prototypal for ensuing generations.
His tenor style was quick to become the standard against which all successors were judged.
As the composer and biographer Sydney Homer wrote, "Before Caruso came, I never heard a voice that even remotely resembled his.
Since he came, I have heard voice after voice, big and small, high and low, that suggested his, reminded me of it at times even forcibly."
It would be a mistake to deduce that Caruso's archetypal style and influence were the product of a musical missionary or even an entrepreneur. Other factors contributed to his rise - epochal precepts, which demanded, around the beginning of the century, a new type of operatic protagonist. Had the impeccable refinement of nineteenth century vocalism remained in vogue, with its emphasis on flexible coloratura, an easy command of the highest tessitura and light-weight floridity, Caruso would not have enjoyed equivalent celebrity. He had in fact attempted to absorb this method early in his career, and found himself struggling against his own natural instrument (especially at the top of the voice). The miracle of Caruso's career is that a new era was about to dawn, first heralded by works like Bizet's Carmen, and Verdi's Otello, works that demanded more weight in the timbre, sustained phrases of brazen tone, and moments of heart-tearing climax. The 'new school' of Italian composers (Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Puccini, Giordano, Ciléa etc) had caught the public's imagination, and suddenly the various strands of opera's diverse traditions were homogenised into a fresh, unwieldy style, for which few singers of the former generation were equipped. The spectacle of French opera (with its need for large theatres and visual opulence) was grafted onto the notion of thicker, richer orchestration as pioneered by Wagner, and into this cocktail was injected remnants of the Italian tradition, such as indulgent vocal line, digestible melody, and the clear-cut moral identity of stage characters. The raw passion of Italian culture provided a literary context, and suddenly verismo Many critics at the time, including Shaw and W.J. Henderson, rejoiced in the departure of the traditional Italian tenor, with his pronounced "goat-bleat," and welcomed the arrival of a singer with clear and pealing tones, of the sort that would inflame the audience, rather than titillate or delight. It was the age of Ruffo, Chaliapin, Jeritza and Ponselle: elemental rather than ornamental singers, who incorporated great intensity of drama in their delivery. But this should not shroud the fact that Caruso was also a master of mezza voce, especially in the early part of his career, and he excelled in roles like Nemorino (L'Elisir d'Amore), the Duke (Rigoletto) and Ferdinand (La Favorita), all of which require a lyrical approach; as distinct from the dramatic requisites of characters like Andrea Chénier, Turiddu (Cavalleria Rusticana) and Samson, which Caruso performed with equal success. It is rare, perhaps unknown, for a singer to sustain the vocal demands of truly dramatic repertoire and retain the delicacy needed for lyric, and Caruso was no exception in this regard. The voice developed a darkness - chest-anchored and baritonal in timbre - towards the latter end of his career, which, whilst equipping him for such burdensome roles as Eléazar (La Juive), ultimately affected the former ease and flexibility of his delivery. His premature death occurred before accusations of a definite decline could be whispered; up until 1920, his gradual move away from lyric repertoire towards dramatic (and the accompanying modifications in his vocal quality) were seen as a development of his resources rather than a limitation. In terms of his apotheosis, death arrived at precisely the right moment. Enrico Caruso Junior has recently confirmed that, contrary to popular myth, his father was not the eighteenth of twenty-one children, but the third of seven. He was born on February 25th 1873, and brought up in a poor, though not destitute, household in the alleys of Naples. He received little education - a fact that embarrassed him in later life - and was compelled by his heavy-drinking father to work at an early age. His first musical education came from the Church, and he sang in the choir of a Father Bronzetti until his voice broke, after which he began to make a living as a hired serenader. An encounter with a minor opera singer led to his receiving formal voice instruction, and an operatic debut took place in a Neapolitan back street theatre on March 15th 1895. The work, L'Amico Francesco, was the undistinguished product of an undistinguished composer called Domenico Morelli, but it was enough to launch young 'Errico' (as he was known locally) on the south Italy circuit. The first major coup of the young tenor's career was his encounter with a suspicious Puccini in the summer of 1897. The composer had insisted on hearing this new discovery before allowing him to sing La Bohème in Livorno. He is said to have halted the audition after just a few bars, with the celebrated line: "Who sent you to me? God himself?" Great fame followed with the première of Giordano's Fedora, at the Lirico, Milan, for which Caruso was selected as a last-minute substitute. "Fedora had been consecrated with the new star," wrote the work's composer, "Caruso's voice conquered everyone's hearts." His powerful, golden timbre, the multiple shades of tone at his disposal, and the flamboyance of his personality soon endeared him to the Milanese public, and in 1902 Fred Gaisberg, of the Gramophone and Typewriter Company, travelled out to the city to hear the sensation for himself. A recording contract for ten arias was duly arranged at £10 per take, a price considered exorbitant by Gaisberg's seniors in London. Against their express instructions, Gaisberg agreed to Caruso's terms, and on the morning of April 11th welcomed the tenor and his retinue to the hotel room where he had set up his equipment. Caruso was impatient to have done, and sang his ten arias one after the other, in quick succession, before departing. He was, as Gaisberg recalled, the "answer to a recording man's dreams," and from those very ten records there eventually derived a £15,000 profit for the Gramophone Company. By the end of his life, Caruso was to have earned more than two million dollars in recording royalties. His reputation was established, but he had yet to make his mark in the world's most prestigious houses outside Italy. A triumphant Covent Garden debut, in Rigoletto, May 1902, was followed by the Metropolitan, New York, on November 23rd 1903. He was to become the toast of America's musical elite, stealing even the hearts of those establishment connoisseurs who lamented the passing of his great predecessor, Jean de Reszke, and the arrival of the unorthodox new management from Italy (led by Gatti-Casazza and Toscanini). Caruso was to sing at the Met for the next 18 seasons, appearing on 607 occasions in 37 different operas. His name was to become synonymous with greatness, a household word, and his movements were followed fastidiously by public and media alike. The end came all too soon for opera fans. At the height of his still considerable powers he was struck down by bronchial pneumonia which developed into chronic pleurisy. An account of his final efforts on stage, coughing blood and fighting intercostal pain, is harrowing, particularly in view of the relative ease with which his condition could be cured today. But the repeated attempts of surgeons could not save his life, and after a brief respite from symptoms, he died in his home town of Naples on August 2nd 1921. The King of Italy himself held open the doors to the royal basilica where the forty-eight-year-old star was laid out for the world to pay its respects. Caruso was loved not just for his artistry and his unique contribution to the evolution of opera. He was a humorous, playful colleague, as his innumerable (and remarkably skilled) caricatures bear witness. His practical jokes, earthy wit and innocent simplicity endeared him to friends, while his generosity was legendary: invitations to his annual Christmas parties at the Met were extended to the entire staff, and gifts were liberally distributed to all. Opera singers, particularly those in the highest bracket of achievement, are not naturally prone to the gratuitous flattery of colleagues; and yet every contemporary account, memoir and biography, unfailingly presents Enrico Caruso as a man of exemplary human qualities, as well as the supreme performer of his generation. |
|
| All rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying, public performance and broadcasting of this recording prohibited. |