Caruso: This Clown We Cannot Forget
by Barry R. Ashpole
Caruso as Canio in Pagliacci
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At a recent meeting of
CAPS,
member Barry R.
Ashpole talked about Enrico
Caruso
and the
tenor's exciting and colourful career
on and
off stage,
and his
recorded
legacy.
Here is
a condensed version of the presentation.
Enrico
Caruso and Pagliacci are
synonymous.
It is
Caruso
who comes to mind
when
we think
of Canio's big aria in Leoncavallo's opera.
And just as the tenor's
recording of 'Vesti
la
giubba'
has endured in the minds of even
the most casual listener, so Pagliacci
itself
was the opera
Caruso performed more
times than
any other.
He performed the role
for the first time in 1896, sang more than
100 performances of Pagliacci with
The
Metropolitan
Opera
Company in
New York, as
many again in the major opera houses of the
world,
as well
as frequent galas featuring
Act I
which ends with Canio's great lament.
Some oldtimers,
remembering
the restrained
agonies of
Fernando
de Lucia, Caruso's great
predecessor in Pagliacci, must have been
shocked
by the
new tenor's
vehemence which
invariably left
him visible
shaken after
each performance.
Caruso's artistic career and private life
have
been exhaustively treated in many
books,
innumerable articles and essays,
and
in four films.
One of the greatest opera
singers of all time,
Caruso
was the idol of
the opera
world for more than
two decades.
He
made what
he
regarded as his official
debut in
Naples
on November 16th 1894 in
L'Amico Fritz.
Many more professional
engagements
followed,
and in 1898 he was
engaged by the Teatro Lirico in Milan
where
he created the principal
roles in Adriana
Lecouvrer and Fedora.
In
1901
he became
a
member of the
La Scala
Company.
Caruso's
international
fame
began in
Monte Carlo in
1902 where
he was engaged for three
additional
seasons and
received contracts
from
Covent
Garden and
The
Metropolitan
Opera.
Henrich Conreid, the new general
manager of
the Met,
inherited the contract for the 30-
year-old tenor.
He attempted to have the
number of performances in the contract
reduced to 10 a season.
Fortunately,
before changes could be made, Conreid
chanced to hear one of the remarkable ten-inch
phonograph recordings that Caruso
had made in Milan in April 1902.
Caruso's debut
at the Met took place
November
23rd 1903 in
Rigoletto, the opening night of the season,
maintaining
a tradition which, with only one
exception, lasted
seventeen years in all.
He was the shining light of the
company
and
when
Caruso
sang the
box office prospered.
Caruso duplicated his Met triumphs in all
the major opera houses of the world,
becoming the highest paid singer,
and the
most adulated.
Caruso on Records
Caruso's voice
was
admired for its
range,
tone and shading.
It was powerful yet
supple, exquisite in upper ranges, sensuous
in middle tones and extraordinarily
expressive in
lower registers.
His
recordings allow us to hear what
many of Caruso's
contemporaries
considered the greatest
tenor of all
time.
Caruso's voice
was
uniquely suited to the
medium of the phonograph recording.
Possibly because of its
resonance and smoothness,
and
a sense of
pitch that nothing could shift, his voice
lent itself to
recording
more satisfactorily than most other voices of the time.
Working closely with Calvin Child of
The
Victor
Talking
Machine Company,
Caruso
become the first truly
important artist in
the history of the recording industry.
His
legacy of
262 recordings provides
a complete
account of his career,
covering every aspect
of his vocal art.
Caruso's
C&T recordings
in 1902 were his first; he recorded exclusively with Victor
from 1904
onwards.
Despite their high price
- a typical
12-inch
disc,
recorded
on one side only, cost as
much as $7 - sales soared.
The tenor's
income
from Victor totaled more than two
million
(U.S.) dollars during his lifetime.
Caruso in concert at Massey Hall, Toronto, September 30, 1920
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Original
recordings
were
issued
by
The
Gramophone
Company, Pathe,
Zonophone and
Victor.
Discographers
have identified 496+
recordings,
approximately
260 of which were
published.
The Gramophone
Company and
Victor, however, assigned catalogue
numbers
to records which were not released and
some
collectors have secured special pressings
bearing these
numbers.
Most unpublished
recordings were
destroyed
because they were
imperfect.
Some were not and these surface
from time to time; the source of these are
test pressings
made
by Victor engineers.
In addition to catalogue
numbers and
stamper indicators, the record
companies
etched or embossed other
symbols in the
space next to the label.
G&T and
HMV
records include the matrix
number; early
Victors
include the matrix number, but on
later
records the company replaced the
matrix
number with the
'Take'
number of the
recording.
The symbols, 'S/8' or 'S/10' to
the left of a Victor label
on several
recordings refers to transcribed
stampers:
these are copies of copies.
After Caruso's
death,
Victor electronically amplified or
re-recorded
a number of the tenor's more
popular recordings; these re-recordings,
with orchestra accompaniment, bear the
symbol
'VE'
and are not for the serious
collector.
They are
among the worst transscriptions ever produced.
Piracies of Caruso recordings
by Pan-American
and
Symphony
Concert were all
transcriptions and of very
poor quality.
Opera Disc records, however, are different.
These piracies are pressings of the highest
quality and worth
owning.
They were
made
from stampers which were appropriated in
Germany
during World
War I
and most of them
bear Victor or
HMV surface markings.
In the primitive acoustic era, the
recording
speed varied as
much as
10
rpm either way
from the nominal
78 rpm.
Disregard for this
fact can
make
Caruso
sound either like
a
counter-tenor or
a bass.
Caruso in Canada
Caruso
made two concert appearances
in
Canada during
1920: the first was on Sept-
ember 27th at the
Mount Royal
Arena in
Montreal, the other on September 30th at
Toronto's Massey Hall.
For his appearance
in Montreal,
Caruso
was paid
$20,544.00.
On
the program for the Toronto concert,
Caruso
was scheduled to sing three arias:
from
La
Boheme,
"Che gelida manina",
from E'lisir
d'Amore,
"Una furtive lagrima",
and from
Pagliacci,
"Vesti
la giubba".
We learn from
newspaper
reports of the day that he gave
more then
a dozen encores.
Just three months after his Canadian concert appearances
-
on December 17th -
Caruso
coughed blood during
a performance
at the
Brooklyn
Academy.
The diagnosis at
the time was
intercostal
neuralgia.
His
607th and last performance at the Met - and
his last opera
anywhere - took place
Christmas
Eve
when
he
sang in
La Juive
while suffering great pain.
Pleurisy developed into bronchial
pneumonia;
an operation
removed the fluid from his pleural
cavity and it seemed almost certain that
Caruso would
recover.
However,
in February 1921, he developed complications.
After more treatment, Caruso returned to
Italy for a
long rest.
During the
summer
he
recovered sufficiently to work with his
voice, but a relapse proved swiftly fatal.
Caruso's death
was mourned
throughout the
world,
which paid tribute to him such as
few singers
before or since have received.
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