He sings with complete security no longer intimidated by the recording process. The first recording he made for Victor was Questa o quella from Rigoletto, the opera of his American and Met debut five weeks earlier. His first session for the Victor Talking Machine Company was on Februin Carnegie Hall. He made his Met debut in 1903 on opening night and in effect became the house tenor for the next 17 years. In 1904 he signed an exclusive contract with the Victor company and made all of his recordings thereafter in the United States with the exception of two he made in Milan in April of the same year. There’s less vibrato and more of the trumpet like tone associated with his voice at full blast. In this recording his voice is free and his breath control spacious.Ĭaruso’s October 1903 recording of Qui sotto il ciel from Meyerbeer’s L es Huguenots shows the further development of his voice. Canio in Pagliacci, of course, was the role most closely identified with him. He also recorded Vesti la giubba for the first time. A much more effective conclusion which Giordano must have realized since he went along with it. He doesn’t end the piece as written but slows it down. He recorded Amor ti vieta with the composer at the piano. They were made in one take each which eliminated any chance to fix problems.Ĭaruso’s caricature of himself and Umberto GiordanoĬaruso had created the role of Loris in Giordano’s Fedora in 1898. The 10 recordings he made on April 10 of that year are full of miscues and errors of style, but they do show a beautiful lyric tenor that does not have the baritonal richness that characterizes his later work.
His first recording session was in a hotel room in Milan in 1902.
He made the recording industry and it made him the most famous artist in the world. Caruso’s relationship with the phonograph was the ultimate in symbiosis.
Having multiple copies of every recording Caruso made I decided to systematically relisten to them in chronological sequence. Since purchasing that collection, I’ve been buying different releases of the same Caruso recordings for longer than the great Neapolitan tenor lived. The multi-disc set was enclosed in a faux leather case and contained a well illustrated booklet written (though not with strict accuracy) by the Met’s then assistant general manager Francis Robinson. In the mid 1950’s RCA records issued a deluxe compilation of many of Enrico Caruso’s recordings.
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