Enrico Caruso

Luciano Pavarotti argued that Enrico Caruso is the tenor against whom his successors have to measure themselves. Caruso is adept at both the vocal refinement of bel canto (“beautiful singing”) and the edgy passions of the heart-on-sleeve verismo (“realism”) school, enjoying a popularity far beyond the confines of the opera house thanks to the development of the fledgling recording industry. Born in Naples in 1873, the tenor started his career singing Neapolitan popular songs and eventually impressed Puccini—so much so that the role of Dick Johnson in the Italian composer’s La Fanciulla del West (1910) was written with Caruso's voice in mind. Europe witnessed many of his early triumphs, but from 1903, New York’s Metropolitan Opera became the stage with which he was most closely associated. The first artist to sell over a million copies of a single disc, Caruso also embraced cinema and newsreel, disclosing a media savvy ahead of his time. Whether he was performing street songs and ballads or Verdi and Wagner, his singing embodied the essence of his own larger-than-life personality; following his death in 1921 the funeral was held in Naples’ Royal Basilica by command of the King.