February 25 marks the 150th birthday Enrico Carusoone of the most impressive pieces of music in history and one of the first to preserve his voice for future generations through audio recordings.
Caruso before he was Caruso
He was born in Naples in 1873. Just fourteen months before the world premiere of the opera Aida to Verdiwho was reincarnated by Radames years later.
Some of the roles that would later lead him to fame (Mauricio in Adriana LecouvreurLoris V Fedoramario in rough or Pinkerton’s Madam Butterflyamong others) had not yet been written.
He grew up in a low-income family. From the age of ten, he combined work as a mechanic with occasional performances as a street singer. It was in the year 1891 when he began his apprenticeship Guglielmo Virgin. The first time that virgin I heard he wasn’t overly optimistic: È ‘inaudible’ He said (“It’s a sound and nothing”). But tenacity Caruso Soon you will work.
His official debut came in 1894 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples Lamico Francesco to Mario Morelli.
Four years later, he began one of the most promising chapters of his career with world premieres in which he starred at the Teatro Lirico in Milan in works such as larlisiana (1897), Fedora (1898) and Adriana Lecouvreur (1902).
Also in 1902 he made his debut at London’s Covent Garden with Rigoletto. This title also accompanied him to his first success at the Metropolitan Opera in New York the following year, thus beginning a very active relationship thanks to which he dominated all seasons until 1920.
Rigoletto It was also his introduction message in Spain and his only appearance on the country’s stages.
failure in Barcelona
On April 20 and 23, 1904 Caruso Participated in two productions Rigoletto at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, to never perform there again after that.
The first took place without incident, although after a day Barcelona newspaper pointed out:
Mr. Caruso had to repeat in the verb first Plata And the third and three times The lady is animated: With this it can be considered that the famous tenor had a great hit last night. However, it was not. Mr. Caruso, who, as is frequently said among artists, had his good and bad days, was not in one of the firsts, and his great faculties, which are evident without any doubt, cannot be appreciated in all their purity, and they have sometimes been distorted by insecurities in intonation, which he One of the things our audience hides with the greatest difficulty and which they did not want to leave without protest, especially in the duet of Act Two, where he was the artist. most decomposing.
The second and final post didn’t seem to have been better received. It also had a precedent Angelo Masiniwho achieved such successes in his interpretations Rigoletto At the end of the nineteenth century who sang on various occasions four, five and six songs from “La donna è mobile”.
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Not everything was smooth for the duration. November 17, 1906 New York times mentioned on the cover Carusobut this time not in a musical review or by announcing his upcoming performances, but in no less than a chronicle of events.
The tenor had been arrested the previous day for “treating and upsetting a woman who was near him” at the Central Park Zoo’s monkey house. According to the newspapers the next day, Caruso He maintained his complete innocence and claimed that the police had made a mistake. Girlfriend Heinrich Konriedthe Met’s manager, posted $500 bond to get him released from jail.
Caruso’s case has reached every corner of New York. Dubbed the “monkey scandal” by the press, it was used by racist sectors of American society to charge the Italian people. According to the historian David Suisman In a magazine article BelieverThe former NYPD chief told the newspaper that “the arrest was a scandal” and “the conviction was not based on any evidence.”
When the trial opened on November 22, the prosecution launched broader charges against them CarusoAccusing him of harassing not one woman, but several women. The arresting officer testified that Caruso abused not only her, but five other women in four separate incidents at the Monkey House. Caruso was ordered to pay the maximum fine at the time: $10, which today would be about $275.
Caruso is at home
Uniqueness of voice Caruso He arrived on stage at the perfect moment: when the transition from the romantic tenor to the demanding tenor firista was taking place, with almost constant voices.
But it also coincided with the beginnings of the vocal phonograph Caruso Not only was it convenient, it was “the answer to a recording engineer’s dream”. That’s how he defined it Fred Gisberga music producer for the British company gramophone Attracted by the Neapolitan fame, he was offered in 1902 to record ten arias. These will be followed by many more.
with Caruso The recording industry has created a mass market. Listeners no longer need to travel to the opera house to enjoy its sound, but are now at home, where they can listen to it over and over again.
“I am no longer a man, I am a machine that produces money. A machine that produces profits. They force me to live in a glass box, not because they value me. Caruso is just a throat that I sold to managers as Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles.”
After the tenor’s death in 1921, at the age of 48, his commercial phenomenon took on an unprecedented dimension. Now missing from the stage, Caruso’s voice has been immortalized on recordings, adding to his appeal.
The “Caruso phenomenon” was just beginning, and it marked the line between two eras: the era of temporary music and the era of recorded music. No one had the projection or influence of substance in the recording industry at the beginning of the 20th century.
An early advertisement described his recordings as “one of the most natural and faithful Caruso ever made”. Another, published after the tenor’s death, said: “You’re listening to the real Caruso.”
* PhD in Musicology from the University of La Rioja, Spain.
Originally posted on Conversation.
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