Enrico caruso biography recordings from hell
Enrico CARUSO (tenor) ()
A Life in Words and Music
Written and Narrated by David Timson
CD 1
King of Tenors: Enrico Caruso
Family background
Early singing lessons
Caruso's first operatic roles
More auditions and Enrico meets Puccini
Caruso meets Ada Giachetti
Enrico and Ada
St Petersburg
The 'monarch-in-waiting'
December debut at La Scala
CD 2
Humiliation in Naples
Gaisberg records Caruso
Covent Garden debut with Nelly Melba
Caruso joins the New York Metropolitan Opera
The 'King' is crowned
international touring
An earthquake and a brush with the press
La Boheme at the Met.
CD 3
Caruso's health
family upsets
Family and health problems
The season at the Met.
Mafia interest and a recording contract
Ill health back at the Met.
Covent Garden, Tosca and Aida
The war years
Fund-raising concerts
CD 4
Caruso's daily routine
Caruso's private life
marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin
Dorothy in Italy; Caruso on tour
Cuba
injury and worsening health
Goodbye to the Met.
- Caruso retires to Naples
The death of Caruso
Illustrated by 30 original recordings of songs and arias recorded between and and taken from Volumes of the Naxos� Caruso: The Complete Recordings series
Bargain Price
NAXOS. [4CDs: +++]
Regular browsers of this site will have noted my enthusiasm for Naxos�s series of �Introductions� to various operas written by Thomson Smillie and narrated by David Timson.
In this 4CD set David Timson is his own author and researcher and a fine and interesting job he makes of it.
Enrico caruso biography Lyric tenor dramatic tenor. Caruso's best-selling downloads at iTunes have been the popular Italian folk songs " Santa Lucia " and " 'O sole mio ". He made his Met debut in on opening night and in effect became the house tenor for the next 17 years. He has combined careers in clinical medicine, education, basic research, and administration for more than 30 years.The story opens (CD 1 tr. 1) rather unusually by briefly recounting the grand party Caruso and his wife gave on New Year�s Day to mark his Silver Jubilee. The life story proper follows (tr. 3) with a full background to the singer�s early life and family, particularly his relationship with his mother, and conditions in Naples in his childhood.
Caruso�s first singing lessons, and early operatic efforts are covered (trs. 5 and 7), and also his brief �call up� to military service, which was served by his brother instead! This latter arrangement enabled Caruso to make his operatic debut at the �Teatro Nuovo� in his home town of Naples on March 15th in the first production of an opera long forgotten.
However, contacts had been made and the singer filled in as Faust at the more important �Teatro Bellini� in the city he was on his way. By age 22 Caruso was able to earn his living by singing and debuts followed elsewhere. Of course no recordings exist from this early stage in the singer�s career and the narrative is interspersed with arias from later recordings chosen to relate to his roles in the theatre at the time.
CD 1 continues Caruso�s life to include his setting up home with Ada Giachetti, a dramatic soprano in her own right (trs. 11 and 13) and the mother of his sons. She was much more versed in the ways of operatic life than he and having had proper vocal training was able to pass on lessons in breath control and vocal extension.
The tenor�s burgeoning career led to his Milan debut in The following year his international career began with debuts first in St. Petersburg (tr. 15) followed in in South America. Caruso�s debut at �La Scala� in �L�elisir d�amore� was widely acclaimed and is illustrated by the famous aria �Una furtive lagrima� (tr. 20) from a recording made in and featured in Volume 6 of the Naxos series.
It is a criticism that although the recording dates are given in the narrative, the information is not given in the track listing which also, erroneously, gives the singer�s debut at �La Scala� as
CD 2 starts with the so-called Naples disaster when Caruso returned to his hometown�s major theatre.
Canio in Pagliacci , of course, was the role most closely identified with him. Caruso's health deteriorated further during the new year. Caruso appeared in the role later that year and Puccini stated that Caruso sang the part better. Since the expiration of their original copyrights, Caruso's records are now in the public domain in the United States and have been reissued by several different record labels with varying degrees of sound quality.He refused to pay the local �claque� and his performance in �L�elisir�, acclaimed at �La Scala�, was booed. Caruso swore he would only visit the town in future to visit his family and never sang in Naples again (tr. 1). Track 3 has interesting details of Caruso�s famous first recordings for Fred Gaisberg in April , (again the track listing of is in error whilst the narrative is correct).
The disc continues with his debut at �Covent Garden� with Nellie Melba, including insights into his propensity for practical jokes (tr. 3), the �Met� (tr.
This passage is greatly important because i never realized how and where this beautiful screaming came from. For decades, there was a story of Caruso's parents having had 21 children, 18 of whom died in infancy. He was an icon in his work. Although some recordings of complete operas had been undertaken during the early s, Caruso never participated in a complete opera recording.7) where he was to make over appearances in nearly 40 operas, and his other international touring (tr. 11). There are asides on his �amours�, his survival of the San Francisco earthquake and the notorious �Monkey House� scandal when Caruso was accused of harassment of a young woman during a visit to Central Park Zoo.
The vocal selections again relate to the singer�s contemporary performances.
CD 3 is much concerned with Caruso�s health when over-singing and an excessive workload necessitated operations to remove nodules from his vocal chords.
Enrico caruso biography recordings from hell Illness and death [ edit ]. They would sing together often during the early s. Puccini considered casting the young Caruso in the role of Cavaradossi in Tosca at its premiere in January , but ultimately chose the older, more established Emilio De Marchi instead. Hidden categories: Webarchive template wayback links Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from February Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles needing additional references from May All articles needing additional references Use dmy dates from March Biography with signature Articles with hCards Pages with Italian IPA All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from October Articles containing Neapolitan-language text Articles with unsourced statements from July Articles with unsourced statements from January Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Wikipedia external links cleanup from May Commons category link from Wikidata Articles with Project Gutenberg links Articles with LibriVox links Articles with Internet Archive links Articles containing video clips.There were major concerns about his vocal health in the performances that followed the first operation, although these were soon overcome. However, Caruso�s well-being was not helped by the desertion of Ada, his partner of 12 years and mother of his sons, who ran off with their chauffeur (tr. 3). Back to normal health and at the �Met� for the seasons tracks.
6 and 10 give interesting insights to his popularity and workload at that theatre alone. This perhaps contributed to more nodules; he had to cancel appearances after February.
It was 7 months before he could return to the stage when he was beset by more health problems in the shape of severe headaches (tr. 10). Despite these setbacks Caruso was back at the �Met� for the season singing 10 roles and returning to Covent Garden for the first time for many years (tr. 11), a visit he repeated in , his last at that theatre (tr.
13) influenced by the onset of World War 1. Caruso�s activities during the war period, including visits to South America and fund-raising for the troops, are covered (trs. 15 and 17).
The final disc starts with an extensive narrative of Caruso�s strict daily routine, including his superstitions, smoking and stamp collecting (trs. 1 and 2), before expounding on his unexpected betrothal and marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin, twenty years his junior, and from a very different social background.
His return to Italy, with Dorothy, at the end of the war and the family milieu of �pensioners� that he subsidised there perhaps accounted for the trip to Cuba for the then enormous fee of US Dollars for each performance (tr. 9). But the end of the good times was in sight with an injury to his chest, from falling scenery, following a bad cold lead to severe pleurisy.
Misdiagnosis and his refusal to cancel allowed Caruso to continue for several more performances but his th performance at the �Met�, on December 24th , was his last on any stage. After operations for the pleurisy he returned to Naples on May 28th supposedly to convalesce. In reality it was to more illness and death on August 2nd at the age of 48 (tr.
13).
This is a very human-oriented biography and on that basis is informative and enjoyable without being excessively sycophantic, although when dealing with one of the greatest singers of all time it is difficult to avoid superlatives, nor is there excessive salaciousness in respect of Caruso�s philandering.
Enrico Caruso - A life in words and music [RF]: Classical CD ...: The 10 recordings he made on April 10 of that year are full of miscues and errors of style, but they do show a beautiful lyric tenor that does not have the baritonal richness that characterizes his later work. Thanks largely to his tremendously popular phonograph records, Caruso was one of the most famous entertainment personalities of his day, and his fame has continued to endure to the present. Comments doug says:. References [ edit ].
There is also much information that I have not mentioned about fees, repertoire and colleagues. I would have preferred more detailed analysis, with chronological examples from his recordings, of the changes in his vocal timbre following the �crisis� of , and his greater interpretive and expressive powers that were evident, and mentioned in the narrative, in the �Met� seasons during World War 1.
The booklet gives the details of the volumes from the Naxos series from which the vocal extracts are taken, so well remastered by Ward Marston, but not, as I have mentioned, the recording dates; a serious omission. This issue is an ideal complement, or even sampler, to the Naxos complete recordings, but is also a worthy issue in its own right and so much more enjoyable than a dry as dust written biography.
Robert J Farr