(1873–1921). The Italian tenor Caruso was one of the greatest opera singers of all time. The most famous of nearly 70 roles that he sang were the clown in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohème.
Enrico Caruso was born on February 25, 1873, in Naples, Italy. He was the 18th of 21 children, only three of whom lived beyond infancy. The family was poor. As a boy, Caruso worked in a machine shop and ironworks. Determined to be a singer, he sang in churches and on street corners to earn money for lessons. When he was called into the army, a high officer was so impressed by Caruso’s powerful yet melodic voice that he released him to continue studying.
In 1894 Caruso made his formal debut in Naples in an unsuccessful opera, L’Amico Francesco. National acclaim came in 1898 when he created the role of Loris in Umberto Giordano’s Fedora. His debut at the noted La Scala in Milan was in La Bohème in 1900. In 1902 he sang with Nellie Melba at Monte Carlo and then at London’s Covent Garden, in Rome and Lisbon, and in South America. In 1903 he made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where he sang the role of the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Caruso appeared in nearly every country of Europe and North and South America. He sang chiefly in French and Italian, but he also learned seven other languages. He sang in the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan in 1910 and was one of the first great singers to make phonograph records. He was talented at drawing caricatures and published many of them.
With the Italian soprano Ada Giochetti, he had four sons, of whom two lived. In 1918 he married Dorothy Benjamin of New York. They had one daughter. Caruso died in Naples on August 2, 1921, of pleurisy.