Voice of a century

Nearly 100 years ago, the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso died in Naples. Unquestionably the star tenor of his age, he rose from humble beginnings through provincial theatres and on to the world’s leading opera houses – La Scala, Covent Garden and the Met – becoming an irreplaceable fixture at the latter for nearly two decades. ‘He was a unique artist, with whom none other compared,’ said the Met’s manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, on his passing. ‘I do not see how we can ever have such another.’ But unlike his great predecessors, Caruso became a much wider phenomenon – an artist known by name and reputation to the general public at large who never entered an opera house. Few singers were ever so loved, and even fewer can be said to have retained their reputations for a century. What is it about Caruso that has made his name so durable in the popular imagination?

He died in Naples, and that is where he was born, on 25 February 1873; his background was poor, and he himself had a very limited education. Stories of his family consisting of 21 children, however, are untrue: Enrico was the third in a sequence of seven – though only he and two others survived infancy. He was initially trained to sing in a church choir, and it was presumably the need for money, as much as aptitude, that led him as a youngster to sing) by a forgotten composer (Mario Morelli); but this beginning must have been sufficiently auspicious to encourage him to continue.