For no good reason that I can think of, I decided to dig around in some old newspapers and magazines for a few items about tenor Enrico Caruso, Naples' "favorite son." This is in addition to the items already in these pages here and here.

On the occasion of the marriage of Caruso's daughter, Gloria, a 1943 copy of Time magazine recounts a bit of the singer's life decades earlier, saying that "… his Metropolitan debut in 1903 was no smash. Critics found his acting inferior and his vocal style coarser than that of his great, aristocratic predecessor, Jean de Reszke..."

That is a distortion. On November 24, 1903, Caruso's debut received an excellent review in the New York Times (NYT). The paper said of his singing in Rigoletto that "…[Caruso]… made a highly favorable impression, and he went far to substantiate the reputation that had preceded him to this country…His voice is purely a tenor in its quality, of high range, and of large power…Mr. Caruso appeared last evening capable of intelligence and of passion in both his singing and his acting, and gave reason to believe in his value as an acquisition to the company." That's not too shabby.

Two months later, on January 31, 1904, a NYT review says that Caruso's voice is an "unceasing delight in its smoothness , purity and translucent clearness and warmth." True, the reviewer has to namedrop for comparison (because that's what critics do). This one compares Caruso favorably to two other Italian tenors of the preceding decades known to New Yorkers: Francesco Tamagno and Italo Campanini. The review does fault Caruso for overacting, and, indeed, does compare Caruso to Polish tenor, Jean de Reszke; however, far from finding Caruso's vocal style "coarser" than that of de Reszke, the reviewer speaks of the "greater beauty and purity" of Caruso's voice. He finishes by saying that the "New York public will no doubt rejoice at hearing a real Italian tenor again of the finest kind and to know that such have not vanished from the face of the earth."

On the non-singing front, you can follow Caruso through six weeks of low soap-opera in the pages of NYT as he gets arrested in Central Park on Nov. 17, 1906, for allegedly annoying a woman who stood near him in the monkey house. He got thrown in the pokey for a few hours, finally being bailed out for 500 dollars by the head of the Met. He wound up being fined 10 dollars for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He professed his innocence and appealed. (He lost the appeal.) Passion mounted in the Nov. 29 edition when "Italians of St. Louis, rich and poor, formally voted their sympathy for Enrico Caruso this afternoon, and declared that the tenor is being persecuted and maliciously handled by New Yorkers. The resolutions condemn the Judge who tried him and fined him, and declared the trial a travesty on justice and an insult to a man of noble principles." Actually, the case is a bit weird since the woman who accused him gave a false name and address to the cop who took the initial complaint and then failed to show up in court to press her case. The judge fined Caruso on the say-so of the cop and a witness. Hmmmm. A few problems there, Mr. Judge: in most democracies, the accused have the right to "confront their accusers". The case left the city fathers and mothers puzzling over whether or not they should close the monkey house permanently. (They didn't.)

There is a charming article in the June 12, 1912 edition of the NYT in which Caruso tells of his beginnings as a singer in Naples and the help he got from a local priest and even, when he did his military service, from a captain in the artillery. The captain heard Caruso singing aloud on duty and called him in for a modest chewing out. Later, the captain took Caruso to a café, had him sing for the people, then told him to "Be off and study your music…and do not let me see you at the barracks any more than is necessary."

There are many, many other items about the great singer. There is one about how distraught he was in 1911 at the death of one his closest friends, Edoardo Missiano, the person who had "discovered" him in Naples and got him his first singing coach. Also, an item about how he once sang a bass aria in La Boheme because the bass who was supposed to sing it lost his voice. (Caruso was present in the scene, anyway; he just turned his back so the public couldn't see his mouth move and Mr. Laryngitis lip-synched it.) And everyone's favorite—how he could really hold a grudge and be generous at the same time. He appeared in Naples during WWI for personal reasons, but refused to sing. (Years earlier, he had been slighted in his home town and had promised never to sing there again.) But it's for charity! The Red Cross! Caruso wrote them a check for 50,000 dollars.


Photos: (1) Bust of Caruso in a small square near his birthplace in Naples.
(2) A self-caricature of Caruso.