Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso (Italian pronunciation: [enˈriːko kaˈruːzo]; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic tenor - wikipedia

He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.

Caruso also made approximately 260 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920. All of these recordings, which span most of his stage career, remain available today on CDs and as downloads and digital streams.

On 15 March 1895 at the age of 22, Caruso made his professional stage debut at the Teatro Nuovo (Teatro Nuovo (Naples)) in Naples in the now-forgotten opera, ''L'Amico Francesco'', by the amateur composer Mario Morelli. A string of further engagements in provincial opera houses followed, and he received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi that improved his high notes and polished his style. Three other prominent Neapolitan singers taught by Lombardi were the baritones Antonio Scotti and Pasquale Amato, both of whom would go on to partner Caruso at the Met, and the tenor Fernando De Lucia, who would also appear at the Met and later sing at Caruso's funeral.

Money continued to be in short supply for the young Caruso. One of his first publicity photographs, taken on a visit to Sicily in 1896, depicts him wearing a bedspread draped like a toga since his sole dress shirt was away being laundered. At a notorious early performance in Naples, he was booed by a section of the audience because he failed to pay a claque to cheer for him. This incident hurt Caruso's pride. He never appeared again on stage in his native city, stating later that he would return "only to eat spaghetti".

During the final few years of the 19th century, Caruso performed at a succession of theaters throughout Italy until in 1900 he was rewarded with a contract to sing at La Scala. His La Scala debut occurred on 26 December of that year in the part of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's ''La bohème'' with Arturo Toscanini conducting. Audiences in Monte Carlo, Warsaw and Buenos Aires also heard Caruso sing during this pivotal phase of his career and, in 1899–1900, he appeared before the tsar and the Russian aristocracy at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as part of a touring company of first-class Italian singers.

Caruso took part in a grand concert at La Scala in February 1901 that Toscanini organised to mark the recent death of Giuseppe Verdi. Among those appearing with him at the concert were two other leading Italian tenors of the day, Francesco Tamagno (the creator of the protagonist's role in Verdi's ''Otello'') and Giuseppe Borgatti (the creator of the protagonist's role in Giordano's ''Andrea Chénier''). He embarked on his last series of La Scala performances in March 1902, creating along the way the principal tenor part in ''Germania (Germania (opera))'' by Alberto Franchetti.

A month later, on 11 April, he was engaged by the Gramophone & Typewriter Company to make his first group of acoustic recordings in a Milan hotel room for a fee of 100 pounds sterling. These ten discs swiftly became best-sellers. Among other things, they helped spread 29-year-old Caruso's fame throughout the English-speaking world. The management of London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, signed him for a season of appearances in eight different operas ranging from Verdi's ''Aida'' to Mozart's ''Don Giovanni''. His successful debut at Covent Garden occurred on 14 May 1902, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's ''Rigoletto''. Covent Garden's highest-paid diva, the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, partnered him as Gilda. They would sing together often during the early 1900s. In her memoirs, Melba praised Caruso's voice but considered him to be a less sophisticated musician and interpretive artist than Jean de Reszke—the Met's biggest tenor drawcard prior to Caruso.