Caruso's Last Canadian Concert Tour
by Paul Dodington
In
September,
1920,
Montreal
and
Toronto
audiences
came
out in
droves to
hear the tenor
who
had
become a legend in his
own time. In
the
series
of
accompanying
articles,
taken
from
September
and
October
1920
issues
of
Musical
Canada, we get a glimpse of Enrico
Caruso
just
weeks
before
that
tragic
December
performance
of
L'Elisir
d'Amore
in
New
York City
when he began spitting up blood on
stage.
Listening to his records today,
we
can
detect
a
gradual
move
downward
from
the light,
lyrical
voice
of
his
early
career
to
a
deeper,
more
robust
sound
in his
latter
performances.
In fact,
in
many
of his final recordings,
one
can
easily
hear
his
laboured
breathing,
undoubtedly
a result of
his
years
of
heavy
cigarette
smoking,
an ominous portent of his
developing battle with cancer.
In
these
articles
it
is
interesting that there is
no hint
that there was anything in Caruso's
concert
performances
here
that
would indicate
a lessening
of his
vocal powers.
However, in Augustus
Bridle's article,
"Caruso is One of
the
Greatest
Baritones
in
the
World", the point is made that "the
Caruso
of the records is
not the
true Caruso which
comes out in his
superb baritone voice."
Bridle says,
"At 47, he has not
lost
an
atom
of
his
surprising
virility
and
inspirational
technique,"
and
later,
"When
he
becomes
worn out as a tenor he can
put
in
a
decade
as
a
recital
baritone."
Well,
perhaps
he did,
after all,
as
a
baritone
in the
Celestial Choir.
Excerpts
from
"Caruso
Is
One
Of
The
Greatest
Baritones
In
The
World"
Astounding Caruso, the people's
idol
and
the
world's
greatest
baritone-tenor,
came to
Canada
and
in two evenings
moved enough money
from the pockets of the public to
build
a
good-sized hotel.
The
two
Caruso
fests
in
Montreal
and
Toronto
represented
the
biggest
"gate"
ever
taken
in
Canada
for
anything
whatever;
in
Montreal,
$30,000; in Toronto,
$18,000.
The
people
who
predicted
that
the
public
would
be
like
themselves -
go to a movie rather than pay "such
prices"
-
were
badly fooled.
He
has been responsible in the best of
30
years
for
the
turn-over
of
multi-millions
through
managers,
impresarios and ticket vendors.
Caruso
is
the
kind
of
phenomenon
that
vocal
teachers
study
to
discover
what
vocalism
really is - and is not.
He burst
into
metropolitan
opera
about
20
years ago with a thrill that caught
up
the
grand,
old,
never-to-be-
again days of Jean
de
Reszke,
and
with
a
furor
unsurpassed
even
by
Melba,
who
arrived
about the
same
time
and
whom he has lived to see
almost
an
old
woman.
He
was
a
vocal veteran when he was 40.
His
career
has
been
a
continuous
crescendo,
whose "decresc." has not
yet begun.
He has become as famous
as
a
great
baseball
pitcher
to
about
the
same
57
varieties
of
people,
and he has at once remained
the pet
of the plutocrats
in the
boxes
and
the
admiration
of
the
masters in their studios.
To
crown all his
conglomerate
distinctions,
Caruso has never sung
an oratorio, and was doubtful if he
ever could do a complete tenor role
in
an
oratorio
without
being
a
worse caricature
than
he has ever
made of himself with a pencil.
But
there
are
moments
when that
voix
celeste
melts
into
a
mezzo
voce
when you could
imagine him sending
pathetic
shudders
down the spines
of a multitude in
"Thy Rebuke Hath
Broken His Heart."
Caruso is in many respects the
world's
greatest
baritone.
The
older he gets the more certain this
is.
That
he
has
for
20
years
thrilled the world as its alleged
greatest tenor is no contradiction.
The Caruso
known on the records is
not the real Caruso who,
had he not
found
himself
possessed
of
a
phenomenally
high
voice
for
a
baritone,
would
now
have
been
singing the
Prologue to
Pagliacci
and
Les
Deux Grenadiers.
Caruso
can sing tenor, of course.
In some
respects he is the world's greatest
tenor.
But that part of his voice
is a pure "stunt"
which he can get
away with magnificently even to the
extent
of
singing all
the
tenor
roles
in
the
great
operas
in
successful
and
in
most
cases
absolutely unchallenged competition
with
men
who are pure
tenors
and
never
try
to
be
anything
else.
Heard
in
a concert
programme
and
evening
dress,
with
none
of
the
glamour
of
opera
costume
and
accessories,
he
demonstrated
that
in his middle voice he is
a great
baritone artist,
but that
in his
top voice he is just Caruso of the
records,
who has his
own peculiar
tone
colour
in
top
notes,
a
gorgeous,
golden
quality all his
own,
thrilling
and
inspirational,
not
overpoweringly big, but with a
great carrying
power.
In ballads
of the middle voice he uses mainly
the baritone
method,
because it is
there that he does his best work.
His
advent
to
Toronto
was
another
Armistice
Night at
Massey
Hall.
At least
500
motors blared
and
crawled
in
the
rain.
An
avalanche
of
people
swept
out
of
the hall
into
the streets.
The
hall
was
packed
to
the
roof.
Reserved
rush seats -
350
-
were
sold
for
the
stage.
A line
of
"rail-birds" filled the roof garden
along the stage wall.
A study of
these people
alone
was worth half
the price of
admission.
One lady
in a
mauve scarf and
a jockey hat
perched
disdainfully
like
the
statue
of
a
blue-stocking at the
corner.
Just down the line, a man
in
cinnamon
brown
tweeds
made
an
inverted
V of his legs and propped
his
chin
on his
hands.
A pale
young
man
in
a
dark
suit
leaned
over with his tan boots far apart
and seemed about to dive into the
crowd.
One
man
in
the
middle
pulled off his coat and claqued in
a
white shirt -
sans
suspenders,
thank
heaven!
-
while
his
wife
looked disgustedly
nervous;
a
man
next to her resined his
hands for
the
next
round
of
applause.
A
youth in
a
Tuxedo,
with his hair
plastered back,
looked as
pensive
as
a
Psyche till
he
started to
applaud Caruso. It was a marvelous
audience.
By
actual
count,
in
various
sections
of the
house the
proportion of men present
was - on
the stage,
2 in 5;
on the ground
floor,
1 in 4;
in the balcony,
1
in
3;
and
in
the
top gallery,
50-50.
It was a real cross-section
of
humanity
- as
democratic
as
a
street-car
-
from
$3 to
$7.
And
nine-tenths
of
the
audience
were
either owners or admirers of Caruso
records.
His
programme
was well-chosen.
He
was
booked for three great
old
favourites,
the first of which was
Che Gelida Manina from Puccini's
La
Boheme.
The first
impression
was
startling.
He
sang
it
as
a
baritone.
But as Rudolfe he is not
par
excellence.
He is
not
subtle
enough
to
play
the
emotional
nuances to the limit
and
much
too
wise to overact it in a dress suit.
His
old
familiar
tricks
of
the
voice all
began to
come out here.
It
was the
Caruso of the records.
Everybody
knew
what
was
coming
next;
and of course the high notes
could not be neglected.
Caruso
never takes
a top note
that
he
does
not
work
to
its
gorgeous limit of possibility.
He
never falters or weakens.
He never
distresses
you
for
fear
he
may
crack
or
go
flabby.
He carries
into his top notes
a strength that
comes
from
the
baritone
in
his
middle register.
Somewhere about
E
or
F
he
executes
that
inimitable
transition
from the baritone to the
tenor.
It is in this part of his
voice
that
he
gets
his
vocal
quality
which
some critics
have
called
"bellowing".
And it is this
quality
in
Caruso's
vocalism that
makes
him
sometimes
less
than
a
great artist as
a tenor,
whatever
he may be as a baritone.
In
La
Furtiva
Lagrima
from
Donizetti's Elisir
d'Amor,
he
was
much
more of
a master than in the
La
Boheme
number.
The
tragic
colouring of this superb lyric aria
he
developed
with
a
remarkable
combination
of
vocalism
and
histrionic art.
His
face,
never
fugitive
in its
expression,
and
rather
heavy as to the jaw worked
into
a
prodigious
ecstasy
of lament.
Here he worked in the pure
baritone.
It was remarkable
how on
the
same pitch he could throw that
mezzo
into
a
nasal
and at
once
shift into his tenor
quality with
the clarion call
of the
trumpet.
In
this
number
he
achieved
a
triumph of tragic interpretation.
In his third
number,
Vesti
la
Giubba,
from Pagliacci,
he worked
up to a climax.
As in the first he
was descriptive
and
dramatic,
in
the
second
a great interpreter,
in
the third, the pure Italian number,
he
was
the
marvelous
translator.
As
an
expositor
of the unlimited
ecstasy of powerful transfiguration
in
dramatic
song, this
number
was
the piece of the
evening.
In it
Caruso
proved again
and yet
more
startlingly that ...
Caruso
as
a
baritone is vocally almost as great
as Caruso the tenor.
Excerpts
from
"Caruso
Talks
About
-
Caruso",
an
interview
by
the
Montreal Gazette
The great tenor
was reclining
in his suite at the
Windsor Hotel
in
Montreal,
with
assistants,
secretaries
and
valets
in
attendance
on
him.
He
was draped
in
golden
silk
pajamas,
with
a
peacock green smoking jacket.
Also
he
was
smoking
cigarettes
from
a
long amber tube,
and was thoroughly
enjoying
himself.
It
was
an
occasion
de luxe, to
catch
Caruso
in
an
off
moment,
and
have
a
private
expression
of
his
views,
illustrated by Caruso "in person".
"I
feel
very
good
about
my
concert at the
Mount
Royal
Arena
to-morrow night," said Caruso.
"I
went there today and it
seems like
a splendid place to sing in."
"You
feel
in
good
singing
trim?"
the
representative
of
the
Montreal Gazette asked.
"Ah,
that
depends
on
the
audience,"
he replied.
"If
they
smile,
then I smile and sing.
If
they do not then perhaps they will
laugh."
Asked as to his favourite role,
Caruso said he had none,
no matter
what critics might think.
"Take
a
singer
who
has
a
favourite role or opera," he said.
"That
singer
will
make
a
great
success
in it.
Then he will fall
down
in
others,
and
soon
become
little
known except
as
a one-part
man. I have no favourites.
I pitch
my voice to suit each part I play,
and forget
everything else while I
am singing it.
That is
why I have
sung for
seventeen years with the
Metropolitan,
and no one says 'It's
Old Carus'.
I
am a new Carus' for
each role."
Asked
as
to
his
preferences,
Caruso
leaned
back,
puffed
luxuriously
on
an
undeniably
luxurious
cigarette,
and
remarked
that
he
preferred
grand
opera
of
all
things,
because
it
gave
opportunity for
continued
dramatic
intensity
in
conjunction
with
singing.
Next
he
liked
concert
singing,
but not
so
much,
because
it
introduced
so
many motifs
and
arias into one evening, without the
possibility
of
the
opera
in
carrying
on the idea.
Lastly
he
likes
singing
into
phonographs,
because
that
was
even
more
differentiated
and
lacked
the
inspiration
that
the
other
two
gave.
"It is hard," said Caruso,
"to
sing
into
a
voice
recording
machine.
I have sung half a dozen
times for one record, until I could
get the right result."
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