Enrico Caruso

The following three numbered items appeared on the dates indicated in the Around Naples Encyclopedia and have been consolidated here onto a single page.

1.

Caruso, Enrico                                                                                 

This small bust of Enrico Caruso stands in Piazza Ottocalli, not far from the old Hospice for the Poor, and about 50 yards from a very anonymous-looking  building where the great tenor was born. The house is marked by a plaque.

If you like rags-to-riches stories, you will find few as compelling as that of Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). He was the youngest of twenty-one (!) children, only three of whom survived infancy. Born into grinding poverty, he was saved from the life of the scugnizzo (street urchin) by two things: one, he went to work at the age of ten in the factory where his father worked in Naples, and, two, even as a child it was evident he could sing. By the end of his life, he had become the highest paid singer in the world and was generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest operatic tenors ever, a judgment that subsequent history has had little reason to amend. 

Even while working as a lad, Caruso was encouraged by his mother, then his loving stepmother, and a local parish priest to pursue his singing. He joined a church choir and by his mid-teens was taking singing lessons in his spare time and singing at every available opportunity, in cafès, at weddings, even hiring himself out as a kind of singing Cyrano de Bergerac, standing off to the side and singing for tone-deaf swains, who would lip-synch and pretend to be serenading their lady loves. He sang anything, anywhere and anytime, just to get experience. 

Compared to other singers of his day, Caruso's voice was a strange combination of tenor and baritone. He had considerable trouble in his early career with the high tenor register, for example, causing a number of early teachers to tell him that he would never make it. The winds of cultural change were blowing in his favor, however. By the 1880s the age of the light, almost effeminate tenor was over; the new more realistic operas of verismo (realism) such as I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana called for an earthier male voice. In retrospect, it is now obvious that Caruso's voice was the ideal vehicle for this new kind of tenor vocalizing. And since Caruso has influenced every tenor since him, even earlier operas, say by Bellini or Donizetti, undoubtedly sound huskier today than they did when performed in the 19th century.

From 1896, the not-yet Great Caruso
sings at a wedding reception

He started his professional career in Caserta in 1895 and for the next few years sang in the provinces and in various secondary operas in Naples—but not at San Carlo, which was strictly for stars. Playing in the Campania outback in those days was rough. During one performance of Faust, in Caserta, the appearance of the "devil" on stage so terrified the peasant audience that they shouted the performance to a close and chased Caruso and the whole company off the stage and through the streets with sticks and brickbats! Caruso traveled abroad to Egypt, South America, and even Russia slowly building his reputation. His "break" in Italy came in 1900 in Milan at La Scala, by then the opera house in the world. He was a success. 

Then Caruso did something he had always wanted to do: he came back to Naples to 'wow' the hometown crowd at San Carlo. He undoubtedly envisioned coming home in triumph, and if the public had had their way, maybe he would have. Caruso, however, had neglected to butter up the right music critics with invitations and tickets. Add to this the fact that his choice to go to Milan first and then come south was seen by some as an affront to Naples, only recently, and reluctantly, part of a unified Italy. It had all the makings for a hostile reception —and it was, at least on the part of the critics. So, although the public was generally receptive to Caruso, the critics in the local papers panned him, saying his voice was a hybrid of tenor and baritone, and that, dramatically, he was uncouth. He sang in Naples in the winter of 1901/02 and then left, bitterly disappointed, saying he would return to Naples only "to see  my mother and eat vermicelli alle vongole." He kept his word and never sang again in the city of his birth. Whenever he came home to visit, instead of giving a benefit performance for the poor, he would simply donate  to charity more money than even one of his performances would have brought in. 

[For more on Caruso's critic and the offending review. see the item below this one.]

He was a generous, highly idiosyncratic, superstitious man. He refused to travel on certain days of the week, or without consulting his astrologer; he used home remedies for his vocal cords such as garlic and ether spray, much to the dismay of his singing coaches; he smoked, drank and ate to excess; and downed a large glass of whiskey before going out on the stage for his opening number at each performance. One of the strangest stories about him is that, though caught in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and terrified like everyone else, he managed to calm down enough to start singing in the corridors of his hotel. This free performance by the Great Caruso had a calming influence amidst all the confusion going on around him. 

From 1903 until his death his home was the Metropolitan Opera in New York, during which time he sang  622 leading roles. (That works out to 37 major performances each season —phenomenal by today's standards!) His stamina and vocal powers were legendary. On a few occasions, his natural baritone register and perhaps his teenage experience as substitute serenader came to the company's rescue, as Caruso would stand behind a set and sing a baritone aria while the baritone, himself, with a headcold or hangover, would move his lips and fake it! 

Caruso is at least partially responsible for the great popularity of the Neapolitan Song abroad, as he would often include songs such as 'O sole mio or Santa Lucia  as encores after the opera at the Met. (This practice of operatic tenors, Italian or otherwise,  singing Neapolitan Songs survives to this day; witness The Three Tenors.) As a Neapolitan in America, his presence worked magic in the lives of the entire community of his fellow "immigrants". Here was one who had made it, and through him their own lives gained that much more hope for the future. 

Caruso's life combined poverty, incredible hard work, determination and, ultimately, fame and wealth. He was a gifted artist, as well, and enjoyed drawing caricatures of himself in various operatic poses. Indeed, his life, itself, was a caricature of The Artist as Fatalist Disdainer of Caution. He chose, instead, to ride his great talent as fast and as far as it would take him. He died where he wanted to, at home in the heart of Santa Lucia by the Bay of Naples. He was forty-eight.

2.

Caruso, Enrico (2)

Caruso had a knack for sketching caricature. This is one he drew of himself.

I've been reading a bit about Saverio Procida. He was a well-known Neapolitan journalist and critic who passed away in 1940 after a 50-year career dedicated primarily to literature and music. He was in the forefront of those who welcomed to Italy the new and difficult music of Richard Wagner; he also stood up for the obscure theater of Luigi Pirandello well before it was fashionable to do so. All in all, Procida seems to have been a reasonable critic. Unfortunately, he is primarily thought of today as the one who drove Enrico Caruso away from Naples. He reviewed  Caruso's debut at San Carlo in the tenor role of Nemorino in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, performed on the evening of 30th December 1901. 

I decided to read the actual review and found it duly tucked away in the December 31, 1901, edition of il Pungolo (The Goad, an appropriately provocative name for a newspaper). I had read that the review was "scathing". Well, it isn't very kind—true— and may, in fact, have been enough to "goad" Caruso—a temperamental fellow, anyway, by all accounts—into leaving his native city. 

Caruso was not totally unknown in Naples before his debut at San Carlo, as some think. The critic welcomes Caruso back to the city where he performed at the Mercadante theater 5 years earlier. The review also acknowledges Caruso's growing reputation and his recent success at La Scala in Milano in the same role in L'elisir d'amore. The critic then starts with some deft left-handed compliments (warming up for the strong rights to come). Caruso has a "fine, baritone voice..." Caruso was a tenor, so this, in itself, is a sharp left jab. (On the other hand, it is the normal reaction of anyone who has ever heard a recording of Caruso. He was, in fact, a natural baritone who developed a tenor register.) The singer's voice has "good volume... it is even and broad... energetic... displays rare power.. with a silver-like quality." So far —to continue chasing a metaphor clearly much faster than I am—if the critic were a boxer, he is still sticking and moving ... sticking and moving. 

Then, however: 

...but even given the natural quality of a gifted voice, it doesn't seem to me that he has the technical skills that might add some discipline to his natural gift, might put some more substance in his voice, improve his sense of how melody should move, add the agility one needs for light music such as that of Donizetti, straighten out his uncertain intonation (perhaps —I hope— this was just opening-night nervousness). In short, I do not yet discern Caruso as living up to the reputation provided him by his remarkably gifted natural ability...

The next paragraph is a recipe, the critic's overbearing—even obnoxious—prescription for Caruso: what music Caruso should sing and what music he should avoid until his voice can handle it. In the latter category are difficult roles, such as Tosca and all modern music. After all, says the critic, bringing down the house (as Carusuo did) with "Una furtiva lacrima" in L'elisir d'amore is not really that difficult. An encore of that aria is a given, anyway. In short, an untamed voice with potential. The critic hopes that "Caruso will not be offended by my affectionate frankness". Ho-ho. Caruso was. Caruso left after the seventh performance.

As a small point of order, as I noted, Caruso was not entirely unknown in Naples before that. I have in my possession an invitation (left) to the wedding of Di Marzo and Capozzi, the latter being my mother-in-law's aunt (kinship anthropologists among you are free to invent your own name for that— grand-aunt-in-law?). The wedding was on August 26, 1896. There was music of Wagner, Bizet, Gounod, and Faure. There was a 6-piece orchestra, two of whom were singers. The tenor was 21-year-old Enrico Caruso. Ominously, the program also tells us that the harmonium player and conductor was Vincenzo Lombardi. The band-leader was Vince Lombardi! (And they thought Toscanini was tough.)

—(at halftime)— 

"Congratulations, laay-deeez! You've just turned a wedding into a funeral! Johnson, a 12-measure rest doesn't mean you get to sleep for the rest of the piece, understand? Hey, Caruso, is that supposed to be vibrato? If these people wanted to hear someone yodel, they'd get married in Switzerland! And did you get another sandwich stuck in that golden gorge of yours? You lay off the snacks. Them's for the guests, and you're a singer—or at least that's what the sign says. My grandmother croaked 17 years ago and she still has a better high B-flat than that. So, if  I may now remind you girls that those funny little marks in front of some of the notes are called 'sharps' and 'flats', maybe we can go back out there and not totally embarrass ourselves. Now get back out there and play! —Caruso! Put down the cannoli!"

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