Crossword Dictionary
Caruso
Caruso, Enrico Caruso - n
outstanding Italian operatic tenor (1873-1921)
Enrico Caruso, original name Errico Caruso, (born February 25, 1873, Naples, Italy—died August 2, 1921, Naples), the most admired Italian operatic tenor of the early 20th century and one of the first musicians to document his voice on recordings.
Caruso was born into a poor family. Although he was a musical child who sang Neapolitan folk songs everywhere and joined his parish choir at the age of nine, he received no formal music training until his study with Guglielmo Vergine at age 18. Within three years, in 1894, he made his operatic debut, in Mario Morelli’s L’amico Francesco in Naples at the Teatro Nuovo. Four years later, after adding a number of impressive roles to his repertoire, he was asked to create the role of Loris in the premiere of Umberto Giordano’s Fedora in Milan. He was a sensation and soon had engagements in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Buenos Aires.
Caruso became the most celebrated and highest paid of his contemporaries worldwide. He made recordings of about 200 operatic excerpts and songs; many of them are still being published. His voice was sensuous, lyrical, and vigorous in dramatic outbursts and became progressively darker in timbre in his later years. Its appealing tenor qualities were unusually rich in lower registers and abounded in warmth, vitality, and smoothness.