Enrico Caruso - Di quella pira (Victor, February 11, 1906)

During the month of February, Dead Tenors’ Society is paying tribute to the greatest of all tenors, Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) on his 150th birthday. Last week, we examined the tenor’s early years, up to 1902. This week’s installment revisits the late 1890s, and Caruso’s first years at the Met. Here is part 2. The world premieres of Cilea’s L’Arlesiana (1897) and Giordano’s Fedora (1898) helped to establish Caruso as an artist of international caliber. Despite his new found fame, Caruso was unable to enjoy the fortune that should have accompanied it. A hastily signed agreement with his first teacher, Guglielmo Vergine, had already come back to haunt him. The terms of this dubious contract had the tenor paying Vergine 25% of his total earnings during the first five years of his singing career. It seems that the two men interpreted this agreement differently. Caruso assumed that he would pay his teacher for five calendar years, whereas Vergine insisted that he would receive payment for five actual years of singing…a feat which would have taken the tenor the better part of a century to achieve! A few years and numerous court cases later, Caruso emerged victorious and was freed from Vergine’s clutches. By 1903, Caruso was a bona fide opera star. He had made debuts at the major theaters of Europe and South America, including Milan’s La Scala, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, London’s Covent Garden, Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Monte Carlo’s Salle Garnier...