Enrico Caruso
Complete Recordings, Volume 11
Before Europe disintegrated into war, the regular pattern of
Caruso’s existence had been to spend the autumn and winter in New York singing
in ten or a dozen operas at the Met, and then cross the Atlantic to work in
Europe through the spring and summer. Since 1915, however, there had been no
more appearances in England, France or Germany, and when Italy entered the
conflict, it became increasingly difficult for Caruso to make any contact with
his two sons, who were educated in England but generally spent summer holidays
on the Caruso estate at Bellosguardo, near Florence. Not that it ever became
hard to find lucrative work: the summers of 1915 and 1917 saw him in South
America, where audiences were prepared to pay more than $30 a ticket to hear
him sing – in today’s money, probably at least $1000.
Then, after three years observing from the sidelines, the
United States entered the war – fortunately for Caruso’s peace of mind, on the
same side as Italy. During 1918 he took part in a number of benefit concerts to
aid the war effort, often singing patriotic and martial songs such as the
Marseillaise and the Star-Spangled Banner. For one such event, at Carnegie Hall
on 30th September, he joined forces with Amelita Galli-Curci, John McCormack
and the seventeen-year-old Jascha Heifetz, thereby helping to raise $4 million.
These special circumstances account for the militarist strain notable in some
of the recorded items from this era.
On a personal level too this was hardly a normal year for
Caruso. In August he surprised his friends by marrying Dorothy Park Benjamin,
whose father was a specialist in patent law and a former associate editor of
Scientific American. This great patriarch had refused his permission for the
match, citing the great difference in age and the singer’s artistic
temperament. Almost certainly the real objection was Caruso’s social position,
for despite his wealth and success he was still a mere entertainer who had been
born in a Naples slum. Park Benjamin made no secret of his contempt for his own
daughter, and was fond of calling attention to her ignorance and unattractive
appearance, but his malice seems to have been perfectly even-handed. To all
five of his children he left one dollar each in his will, ‘because of their
long-continued, persistent, undutiful and unfilial conduct toward myself’.
The prime casualty of this new arrangement was Rina
Giachetti, Caruso’s sister-in-law and long-term lover. In legal terms she had
no claim on him, but in reality she had been acting for several years not only
as the guardian of his sons but also as a kind of wife during his months in
Italy. Six years previously, he had even publicly announced his willingness to
marry her, but he always hesitated to take the final step – possibly fearing
that Rina might one day make him look ridiculous exactly as her sister Ada had
done back in 1908 when she ran off with the chauffeur.
While not all of the recordings of this period can claim
great musical worth, the singer himself gave no sign that his powers were in
any way diminished. The Morning Telegraph of 7th January 1919, in a measured
and sober review of great tenors past and present, offered the following
judgement: ‘Caruso, in spite of his 45 years, is unique as a tenor. The quality
of his voice is even, warm, perfect, round and rich from the lowest to the
highest register. He is in a place by himself that admits of no comparison’. He
was still adding new rôles to his repertoire when required, and the recording
of the duet from La forza del destino (track 4) was a foretaste of his first
appearance in that opera at the Met in the 1918–19 season. Here, and in a more
lyrical number from Samson et Dalila (track 13), we have a fine sense of
Caruso’s ability to interact with his partners; in these ensemble pieces there is
a pronounced whiff of the stage, which could never be so successfully captured
in the solo numbers.
The horrors of the First World War are now so fully
documented that we tend to assume everyone by 1918 was sick of the fighting.
Not so. Far away from the conflict, at least, there were still plenty of people
whose spirits rose at the sound of marching songs or a call to arms. For
English and French speakers Victor released Over There and Le Régiment de
Sambre et Meuse (tracks 5 and 11), while Italian patriotism found expression in
two songs, Inno di Garibaldi and La Campana di San Giusto (tracks 9 and 10). In
reality, Italy was gripped in the aftermath of war by poverty and social
unrest. Shootings, street fights and vandalism were commonplace, and the communists
were engaged in a campaign to encourage hatred of the rich, as Caruso
discovered to his cost in the summer of 1919. The estate at Bellosguardo was
invaded by a large contingent of the local population who removed all stocks of
flour, meat, oil and wine that were judged surplus to his needs. Official
papers were brandished, signed by the relevant officials. Caruso may well have
been relieved to sail back to America, where he could continue to record songs
redolent of an Italy ruled only by love, in which Fascism would be for ever
unknown.
Four great Neapolitan numbers were recorded shortly after
his arrival. Vieni sul mar and Addio a Napoli (tracks 16 and 18) were old
classics, while the other two were of more recent vintage – though Paolo
Tosti’s ’A Vucchella (track 15), with words by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio,
has since become one of the best-known and most frequently recorded of all
Neapolitan songs. Tu, ca nun chiagne (track 17) was written in 1915 by Ernesto
De Curtis, a contemporary of Caruso, whose fame now rests largely on the
extraordinary success of another favourite encore item, Torna a Surriento.
Hugh Griffith
