ENRICO CARUSO (1874)

The most admired Italian operatic tenor of the early 30th century and the first singer whose qualities can be confirmed by posterity through the phonograph, whose valued he was the first leading musician to recognize.

Caruso´s debut in Naples at the Teatro Bellini in 1894 went unnoticed but four years later he achieved fame in Milan in what was to be his most celebrated part, Rodolfo in Puccini´s La Bohème.

In that year he sang Loris in the premiere of Umberto Giordano´s Fedora. He created the chief tenor roles in Francesco Cilea´s Adriana Kecouvreur and Alberto Franchetti´s Germania, as well as in Puccini´s fanciulla del west.

Puccini irked Caruso by denying him the creation of the tenor role in his Tosca (1900) and shortly afterward he pointedly included an aria from it in his first recording. His singing of the aria "Vesti la giubba" in the role of Canio in Leoncavallo´s I Pagliacci was one of his most spectacular achievements.

His voice was a strong, easy, and intensely appealing lyric tenor, unusually rich in lower registers and abounding in warmth of feeling, vitality, and smoothness.

In 1902 he made his London debut at Covent Garden and the next year appeared at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, where he remained chiefly active.

In later years his voice became darker and larger but also harder.

He sang most of the major French and Italian tenor roles as well as Italian ballad songs.

He made a second reputation as a brilliant lightning caricaturist.