I’ve been reading The Good Years, by the great Walter Lord. It’s a 1960 casual overview, something longer than the a Reader’s Digest version of history, a chapter-by-chapter read on key moments of the first part of the 20th century. Last night, for example, I read the 24-page chapter on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent fire.
Go ahead and play this while you read on.
Prominently figuring into that chapter is Enrico Caruso, the tenor you are listening to right now. He was visiting California with New York’s Metropolitan Opera for a production of Carmen.
He stars in a great apocryphal story about the disaster — some version of it you’ve run across before, even if it wasn’t San Francisco and Caruso — which you can read here:
It was one of those great moments in history that never actually happened: According to one legend, Enrico Caruso was in San Francisco during the earthquake of 1906, staying at the Palace Hotel. As people panicked and chaos ensued in the aftermath, the great tenor appeared — some said on the balcony of his hotel room, which didn’t exist — and sang an aria to calm the masses.
Or not.
I just learned that he died 100 years ago, to the day. Here’s the August 02, 1921 Evening Star from Washington D.C.
And I’ve reworked that long column to make this a bit more convenient for the web.
Coverage continues, on page 19:
The obit continues, “it seemed as if the very heavens today mourned the tenor’s loss, for scarcely had there appeared on the streets the first extras telling of his death than it became dark as night. Great clouds, heavy with rain, draped the skies.”
The piece details, at great length, that the famed tenor fell ill at Christmas, 1920. Caruso struggled with his health for eight months, including a trip back to his native Italy from the United States. He had several surgeries and struggled to recover — reports of his few public appearances varied, he looked in good spirits, but thin and unwell. Reports were that he’d never sing again.
He refuted that as long as possible.
And why not? The man, in all of his power, sounded like this.
A hundred years to the day … timing worthy of an opera star.
One of the first truly global superstars, he recorded 247 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920. This is thought to be his last one.
One production note … High fidelity wasn’t introduced until about 1925. All of the tenor’s recordings were made with an acoustic process — Caruso sang into a metal horn and the sound was transferred directly to a master disc via a stylus. He was one of the first artists to embrace the technology, others soon did when they saw his record sales. But the process shared only a part of his gift with his fans: the acoustic process captures only a limited range in the singing voice. Even still.
The kitties don’t seem to be fans of tenors. They’ve heard me sing enough that, I’m sure, no classically trained artist is going to turn them around.
But they are fan of attention! It was belly-rub-o’clock when I walked by Phoebe here:
And it was “Don’t stop petting me thirty” here:
Poseidon hanging out in his tunnel. He likes opera. He simply has the right attitude for it:
He also likes staring out of the windows:
I wonder what aria he’s thinking about as he studies the side yard. (‘O sole mio, definitely.)
