Enrico Caruso: A tenor with heart

At the height of his career in the first decade of the 20th century, Enrico Caruso was the most famous man in the English-speaking world, his voice not merely recognised in every notable opera house, but everywhere where anyone possessed a gramophone.

Born in Naples, he was at the age of 11 apprenticed to one of the city’s mechanical engineers – but that didn’t last long. When his voice broke, it turned out to be a vibrant and pleasing tenor, and he began collecting lire as a street singer. Ten years later, schooled by a somewhat obscure but clearly talented teacher, he was singing minor roles at the city’s Teatro Nuovo, and in 1900, aged 27, he made his début as a principal at La Scala, Milan, as Rodolpho in La Bohème, under the great conductor Toscanini.

He was soon in demand in Europe, singing at the Royal Opera House, then the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, and on to the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky in Russia, before eventually reaching New York and the Metropolitan. But his world fame was established before all that – off-stage. In April 1902, in an hotel room in Milan for a fee of a hundred pounds, he sang ten numbers into a recording device. The resulting disks, issued only a decade after the first commercial records had gone on sale, became best-sellers all over the western world, as did many of the 240 more he made during his career. This ensured that his remarkable voice was immediately recognised the moment the needle hit the shellac.

His first appearance at Covent Garden, in 1902, was in Rigoletto with the world’s highest-paid soprano, Nellie Melba. Their collaboration became famous, though she considered him a boor and he thought her stuck-up – hence the famous occasion when during the first act of La Bohème he ensured that Melba’s hand was not frozen by pressing into it a hot sausage. His sense of humour was basic, and indeed he was a simple man. Caught in the famous San Francisco earthquake, as he rushed through the wreckage of his hotel, he was heard to vow that he would never return to a city where ‘disorders like this are permitted’.

Caruso defined his career simply: one only needed ‘a big chest, a big mouth, 90 per cent memory, 10 per cent intelligence, lots of hard work and something in the heart.’ The heart, certainly: no-one else ended Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci with quite such a heart-rending sob. His repertoire of over 500 popular songs brought out a sentimentality which his art made not only tolerable but moving. His colleague Richard Tauber asserted that there was no living tenor with a voice which could stand comparison with Caruso’s: ‘it makes me realize how little I have achieved.’

A heavy smoker of strong Egyptian cigarettes, in December 1920, while on-stage at the Metropolitan, he suffered a throat haemorrhage; after only four more performances he returned to Italy, recovered somewhat, but died on 2 August 1921. The great soprano Rosa Ponselle said of him, ‘When you speak of tenors, you must divide them into two groups. First, Caroso – then all the rest’.

Celebrating Caruso, Friday 24 February, 1:00pm

Photo by Kurt Sneddon