Enrico Caruso : a biography

Front matter

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Preface

Tue purpose of this book is to present a portraiture of Enrico Caruso and to set down essential facts touching his career and private life which belong properly in a biography. It is doubtful if any other music artist attained so widespread a popularity ; on the side of interpretative art he has been accorded, almost unanimously, a supreme place. In an age wherein personalities are not few, Enrico Caruso appears in an outstanding light; he was one whose name and photograph were instantly identified and recognized wherever civilization prevailed.

To secure and detail facts, and to permit the individuality of the man to reveal itself as it was, have been the aim of author and collaborator. Neither time nor effort was spared to obtain from every authoritative source possible information which it was felt should have representation in this volume. Members of the Caruso family, intimate friends, persons associated with the singer in his professional activities have assisted to make the work as complete as possible. This aid came from the United States, Italy, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Cuba, and South America.

In a letter written to the author, on November 15, 1921, Mrs. Enrico Caruso stated, “It is most

Vill PREFACE gratifying to me that you have consented to write the biography of my husband. Mr. Caruso told you so much of his life-story when you and he prepared that comprehensive series of articles two years ago. And, as you know, he had planned to collaborate with you in writing his biography for publication as a book, a volume that would stand as a permanent record of his career as an artist and a man. ' “Twill, of course, give you full access to all the letters, papers, and other data which belonged to Mr. Caruso; and I will assist you in every manner possible, for your book will be the only authentic biography. I am happy that Bruno Zirato is to assist you as collaborator.”

Giovanni Caruso, only living brother to the singer, wrote to the author in a letter dated November 20, 1921, “I am sending the data you wanted, and will arrange to confer with you and Zirato as often as may be necessary, during my stay in America. Your book of Enrico will be the only book, the one he had told me he expected you and he would write together.”

For all their deep interest, both Mrs. Caruso and Giovanni Caruso realized that the value of the biography would rest in its fidelity to fact. Enrico Caruso was human; he therefore had shortcomings as well as virtues. To disclose them as they existed has been the constant purpose of the author. He has sought, as far as possible, to let experiences tell the story.

To the reader it must be apparent that integrity and industry were no less responsible for the achieve-

PREFACE 1X ments of Enrico Caruso than his vocal and artistic gifts. The development of the man was such as to be little short of amazing; one has only to read to appreciate the growth and unfolding of his finer qualities, which carried him from the beginning (a youth of humble parentage, having the slenderest of early opportunities) to an ultimate position of justly earned admiration and respect. “4

Despite the generous physical proportions of this volume, it has not been possible to use everything available for publication. Much that was at hand could not be incorporated in its pages; excellent and interesting incidents — if non-essential from a biographically historic standpoint — were omitted with regret.

The gathering and assembling of the necessary material represents a huge and exacting task. No one else was so well fitted for it as Bruno Zirato, secretary to Enrico Caruso throughout the closing years of his life; and Zirato’s constant and helpful suggestions to the author during the writing of the text form a large part in its accomplishment.

Grateful acknowledgment by author and collaborator is made to the following persons, who codp- _ erated in supplying information — without which the book as it stands could not have been made:

Gabriel Astruc, Vittorio Arimondi, Pasquale Amato, Frances Alda, Camillo Antona-Traversi, A. F. Adams, Henry Bassano, Richard Barthélemy, Giovanni Bellezza, L. Barcellona, Elena Bianchini-Cappelli, Francesco Cilea, Francis C. Coppicus, Ricardo Cabrera, Richard S. Copley, Federico Candida, x PREFACE

Roberto Ciappa, Feodor I. Chaliapin, Maria Castaldi-Caruso, Amedeo Canessa, Calvin G. Child, Martino Ceccanti, Gino Castro, Nicola Daspuro, Giuseppe de Luca, Menotti Delfino, Eugene H. Danziger, Carlo d’Ormeville, Andres de Segurola, Carlo d’Amato, Luis P. Figueras, Vittorio Ferraguti, Mario Fantini, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, Filippo Galante, William J. Guard, Fabian Garcia, Giuseppe Grassi, Giovanni Gatto, Cesare Gravina, Frank Garlichs, Otto Gutekunst, Giuseppe Jaricci, Giuseppe Lusardi, Michele Lauria, Enrico Lorello, Mario P. Marafioti, Leopoldo Mugnone, Antonio Mazzarella, Alberto A. Macieira, Lionel Mapleson, Herman Mishkin, Vincenzo Morichini, Carl E. Peck, Giacomo Puccini, Percy Pitt, Graziella Pareto, Angelo Ruspini, Titta Ruffo, Antonio Scotti, Antonio Stella, Enrico Santini, Louise Saer, Sadie M. Strauss, Alfred F. Seligsberg, Pasquale Simonelli, Marziale Sisca, Arturo Scaramella, Joseph Tonello, Egisto Tromben, Enrico Usiglio, Henry Uterhart, Beatrice Vergine, Gianni and Gina Viafora, G. B. Vitelli, Edward Ziegler. The Municipalities of Genoa, Treviso, Trieste, Naples, Palermo, Livorno. The Metropolitan Opera Company of New York. The Colon Theater of Buenos Aires. The San Carlo Theater of Naples. The Covent Garden of London. The Vittorio Emanuele Theater of Palermo. The Alla Scala Theater of Milano. The Cimarosa Theater of Caserta.

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CHAPTER

I

Il il IV V Vi Vil Vil

Contents

INTRODUCTORY YouTH .

Workine Days Deéxsuts REALIZATIONS CLIMBING EsTABLISHED Tryinc Days A New Perrop Go.pEN Days TWILIGHT

Tue ENnp

Chapter One

Looxine back to that particular Saturday, I can see now how virile a thing is hope; how easily it may thrust reason aside as too assertive. I am not likely to forget either the date — May 28, 1921 — or the hour — one o’clock in the afternoon—commemorative in these pages of my last meeting with Enrico Caruso.

He was seated in a room high above the rumble of New York streets, which is imaged still in the mind. His chair was drawn close to a slender-legged table topped with an oblong of thick glass. Without a coat, his vest partly unbuttoned, he was guiding stiffly with the fingers of his gloved right hand a pen. Through the south window shone the sun; the spring air suggested approaching summer. Qn other such days had he been thus engrossed ; though with body and spirit less wasted. He had come, very slowly, back to the period of convalescence known now to have been part of the danger period of his sickness.

Traversing mentally the events which have followed since that day leaves a bewildered feeling of an opportunity neglected. So much might have been said—in place of the inconsequential talk seemingly befitting the occasion. Others no doubt are conscious on their part of a similar omission. Perhaps it was just as well that no such special attitude of mind was allowed.

As Edward Ziegler and I were admitted to the Caruso apartment in the Hotel Vanderbilt we caught sight of the tenor—down the long hallway which led to the room where he worked. Bruno Zirato, Caruso’s faithful secretary, was kneeling on the floor opposite the singer, who was dictating some instructions as he laboriously wielded his pen: the disposition of some final matters prior to the departure for the steamship Presidente Wilson. Only a few hours hovered before the voyage eastward from New York toward the land of his birth, which for two years he had not seen.

There was no sense of impending tragedy in that walk along the hallway. It was more a moment of rejoicing that death had been beaten off; that health, if by no means yet attained, lay at no great distance. Trustworthy physicians had approved the proposed journey. Well! Anxious days almost past and gone. Danger may not have wholly withdrawn, but it seemed a danger shrunken and dwindled away to something too puny for a successfully renewed attack.

Some boxes and stripped walls indicated a change of abode for the Caruso household. Expecting our arrival, Caruso had raised his head when Mario, one of his two valets, admitted Ziegler and me. He smiled as we crossed the threshold of his workroom, and extended a greeting with partly lifted arm and a word.

‘“‘Halloo !” he said.

The speaking voice was subdued and lacking its accustomed sonority. For an instant, until he spoke again in slightly firmer tones and smiled with a trace of the old-time humor, a sudden oppression held. Zirato rose and pulled out chairs, while the tenor continued with what developed to be a caricature of his secretary — the last drawing he ever made in this country, and one of the last anywhere.

All the while Zirato chattered on — alternately in English and Italian—and Caruso plied his pen and occasionally interjected a monosyllabic word. A fancied repressed nervousness in the secretary’s manner was contradicted by his smiling countenance; he too (as he has since admitted) felt buoyed by hopes which heartened so many others.

I remember, though, how touched by illness was the singer’s face. Beneath the loosened waistcoat the arched chest of previous days was no more; the whole frame appeared shrunken, and the loss . in weight very many pounds. Considering all he had undergone one marveled that he had survived at all.

He still appeared, on that May afternoon, a very sick man; but who would have sensed the outcome that lay only a few weeks off? Such external evidences as were to be observed of the long fight with disease must gradually depart. Two months, three possibly, under the sun at Sorrento; further rest in a climate which helps to heal such cases, and care. Even the gloved right hand conveyed none of the significance it should. I was aware, too, that the arm had been stricken by the pressure of lying upon it for days when Caruso had remained unconscious, holding to life by a shred of his tenacious vitality. It had left the hand incapable of grasping with firmness any object; so a glove was used to give support and purchase to the fingers.

The mental process of comparing the physical Caruso of the moment with the Caruso of six months before had passed when Zirato finished making notations on the tags attached to the various keys he held. They fitted trunks containing the tenor’s costumes, stored at the time in the Metropolitan Opera House; and at Caruso’s direction Zirato passed to assistant general manager Ziegler these keys, voicing the singer’s desire for their safe keeping.

What a series of pictures the thought of Caruso’s costumes suggested! Seventeen consecutive years of triumphs— and the arrested eighteenth season. Would he don again any one of those costumes? It was impossible to repress the unspoken question. I looked across at the figure at the desk, with drooped head crowned by thinning hair. Caruso was still making marks with his pen on the paper before him. Perhaps he also was thinking of some of his great nights. Underneath the table the tenor’s legs — their slenderness ill concealed by trousered coverings — could be seen stretched out in customary fashion when he sat thus, with ankles crossed. He looked up at that moment and put aside his pen.

There followed then some further commonplace conversation in which we all joined. Caruso gathered cheerfulness, possibly from some mysterious sources he himself did not know. He received with little exclamations of pleasure some messages from friends we had brought him, and leaning back in his chair looked at us out of wistful eyes. In them I caught now and again the distant expression which comes when one projects the mind through great spaces; and I have no doubt that at these moments he had anticipated by a fortnight the voyage of the Presidente Wilson, and was already in Sorrento — across the bay from his beloved Naples — and was perhaps getting some of the good of it.

The desire to linger was put resolutely away and I rose to leave; there was a realization of what a tax upon a none too abundant strength would be the experiences at sailing time.

I wish I might know what thought Caruso held as we clasped hands in what I did not suspect was the long farewell. Hope — virile Hope — continued on guard even at that precious instant.

At the end of the passageway, preparatory to stepping into the hotel corridor, I turned; and Caruso lifted slightly his gloved hand. He was still seated before the slender-legged table, gazing down the hallway, as I drew the door shut after me.

Five hours later found the singer on the deck of his ship, Mrs. Caruso standing by his side, with Baby Gloria seated on the rail between them. A throng of people swarmed the dock; many among those faithful hundreds had remained patiently waiting for more than half thé day. They waved hands and hats and handkerchiefs as the Presidente Wilson moved away from her slip. It was America’s unconscious farewell to its best loved singer.

II

An estimate of a great man may come in his lifetime, but only when he is gone forever is the true evaluation reached. There seemed at Enrico Caruso’s death an immediate realization of a world loss, — due to the affection felt for him. Indeed, it was from the pleasure his singing gave that Caruso became in a way the property of the people. He always said that he belonged to the public; and what a vast public it was! But the sadness which touched so many those August days of 1921 must have dulled the perceptions. Not until months later did there arise a full consciousness of the gap he has left.

Through “the machine” (as he termed the phonograph) he was available to multitudes who could by no other means feel the spell of his voice and art. It seems a fitting medium, now, to help keep our memory of him fresh: we have only to close our eyes — listening to his reproduced singing — to have him almost with us.

Preparing this volume was not easy; Caruso had expected to share the work. He first spoke of it toward the end of numerous meetings we had, during which he supplied the material for a series of articles covering experiences in his life. As the story grew, so did Caruso’s interest warm to the idea of expanding and rewriting the whole into a book. He believed this should be leisurely done, with respect for facts. The undertaking, he knew, would be laborious: securing much data from the countries where he had appeared, then arranging this chronologically with other data. To select what we felt should go to make the text of some forty thousand words had been trying enough. The singer’s appreciation of this deterred him from the more elaborate and painstaking effort; yet he did not dismiss completely the thought, for, now and again, at some unexpected moment, he would refer to it.

No effort is necessary to picture him as he appeared the evening we finished the last of these articles. It was Caruso’s 1920 name day, July 15. He sat in his workroom in a rented villa at Easthampton, Long Island, cutting strips of Manila paper to be made into huge envelopes. Such work he enjoyed, just as it pleased him to gather the accumulation of newspaper clippings and put them in these homemade receptacles. Afterward he would paste the cuttings, with meticulous care, in scrapbooks. Idleness he disliked; rarely was he satisfied to confine himself to a single task if he could perform simultaneously another. As he grew older he guarded carefully his time; there were few waking hours he did not turn to profitable account. During his final years there was the almost constant companionship with Mrs. Caruso, and the eagerly seized playtime moments with Baby Gloria.

Much that follows in these pages was jotted down when Mrs. Caruso was actually present, or near by. That first day, in the singer’s Knickerbocker Hotel suite (February, 1920), automatically revisualizes itself: a wintry afternoon in New York, as dusk approached, with the narrator modeling on a clay bust of himself as Eleazar in “La Juive” ; Mrs. Caruso ' clicking a small typewriter in one corner of the room.

These were moments for studying the man, his face, his figure, his habiliments, his inherent simplicity. He spoke always with a resonant enough tone, though it was seldom loud or suggestive of a singer, except to music experts aware of the significance of a speaking voice concentrated where nose and forehead join. Caruso’s speech was rarely hurried. Deliberation, of a sort which reflected thoroughness, attached to whatever he said and to nearly every movement he made. While seated he had a way of occasionally leaning forward; massive from the waist up, his high-curved, barrel-like chest indicated its store of breathing space and power.

On this February day Caruso was all but ready for the street; he need only have exchanged his dark lounging robe for the customary sack coat. As usual, he was immaculate from head to shoes ; the singer particularized in such matters. Surveying one side of Eleazar’s nose which had eluded his modeling skill, he half-shut his eyes as though preparing for some mental journey. Having diverted his attention from the rebellious bit of clay, he sat with body relaxed, the stick he had been using protruding from the heavy fingers of his right hand. Directly he put it on the stand before him, to fit a cigarette into a long holder. That done, he began puffing, his head tilted to one side, his shoulders showing square and wide and high under the loose folds of his gown.

At that instant he appeared a Somebody. Author- ‘ity which he had been acquiring gradually for years was in those days of his life so natural that in such a situation he seemed splendidly aloof. Even the Caruso voice was subservient to this authority, which made him the singer he could not have become with voice alone, though it were this rather special voice.

When Caruso recalled his thoughts to his surroundings that wintry afternoon, it was with a perceptible flexing of his body. Resuming work upon the imperfect side of Eleazar’s nose he began his narrative.

CHAPTER TWO YouTH

Enrico Caruso was born in Naples, Italy, February 27, 1873, on the first floor of a house’at Number 7 via San Giovannello agli Otto Calli. He was the eighteenth son. His parents were both born in Piedimonte d’Alife: Marcellino Caruso on March 8, 1840, Anna Baldini on May 29, 1838.

It is difficult to reconcile the foregoing dates, and no birth records are available to substantiate them. Caruso and his brother Giovanni— speaking on different occasions — were in agreement as to the ages of their father and mother; each stated that there were twenty Caruso boys and one girl.

None of the seventeen children had survived infancy, so, as Enrico thrived and approached his third year, a new happiness crept into the Caruso household. January 8, 1876, gave it a fresh impetus, when Giovanni was brought into the world; but between him and Enrico another son had come “without the strength to live.” Assunta, the only gitl, followed Giovanni on August 10, 1882, the twenty-first Caruso child. She died June 2, 1915, adoring her brother Enrico who, apart from providing for her every comfort, had shown her a constant tenderness throughout her somewhat melancholy life.

Anna Caruso had been too ill to nurse her Enrico. Signora Rosa Baretti, a woman of gentle birth living

‘NOdDN “LSSD1D "'T 010

YOUTH II in the same house, was the one who volunteered to save a life. In later years Caruso insisted that it was she who had put into him some of her own bigheartedness.

When he was six, and the family moved to Number 54 via San Cosmo e Damiano, Enrico was sent to a kindergarten, where he remained for two years. At the time his father had employment as a mechanic in the factory of a Signor Francesco Meuricoffre, being advanced, about 1881, to superintendent. In this year his employer gave him the use of a house in Sant’ Anna alle Paludi, which belonged to the factory. So once again the Caruso family transferred their belongings, to a more permanent abode; they remained in it until Enrico Caruso reached manhood and began seriously his professional career.

From this home, at the age of eight, the boy Enrico made his first acquaintance with a public school. No emphasis was put upon it in the narrative, although it is on record that he was required to wear a black cap circled with a blue band, —a sort of insignia of this school. It is known too that he was industrious: he had an eagerness to learn, and even then he was a most considerate son. For his - mother he showed his love in those practical ways not always displayed by children older: he was always ready to help her about the house, to do errands; and often he hovered beside her bed when she fell ill, for, after the birth of Assunta, Mrs. Caruso never completely regained her health.

- This devotion so intensified the bond between mother and son that there grew between them a deep and sympathetic understanding. “If you were to go into the neighborhood where we then lived,” Caruso once said, ‘“‘and ask of the old-time residents for Marcellino’s son, none would know who was wanted; but an inquiry for ‘the treasure of Marcellino’s family’ would bring the instant answer: ‘Oh! you mean Enrico Caruso.’”

The treasure of the family developed early responsibilities affecting his mother’s welfare. If not the actual head of the house, he served somewhat regularly in that capacity. Marcellino Caruso was fond of wine, and his not infrequent absence of evenings put upon Enrico, as eldest child, certain duties.

It was inevitable that this companionship should have had its effect upon an impressionable nature. Giovanni Caruso spoke of it when he arrived in New York, from Naples, three months after the death of his brother. Mrs. Caruso has told of little things her husband unconsciously let drop which sketched intimate word pictures.

An insistence for neatness and order and personal immaculateness, which possessed the tenor during later periods of his life, took root during his childhood. There was no grumbling at having to carry upstairs pails of water for his bath; every such opportunity was more than casually welcomed, — one appears to have been made on any pretext possible. To keep himself fresh, his hair brushed, his clothes free from dust and spots — these were matters the boy refused to neglect. And pride was

YOUTH 13 stirred in the mother when she gazed on her slender son and beheld his efforts which did her credit.

For all his tenderness and devotion, however, the then future great artist was nevertheless a boy; pretty much all boy, and at times a capricious one. Such manifestations became noticeable soon after he joined a school where boys were trained to sing in church choirs, which was conducted evenings at Number 33 via Postica Maddalena by Father Giuseppe Bronzetti. Giovanni Gatto, a sort of tutor and brother-inlaw to Bronzetti (who died in 1893 with the devoted Caruso at his bedside), spoke in 1921 of incidents touching the little Enrico not long after he entered this school, at the age of six. Gatto — one of a considerable number of Italians who later owed many of their life comforts to the singer’s bounty —had Enrico in charge; he called him Carusiello. He remembered well occasions when the youthful singer (a moment approaching for him to contribute a contralto solo in some music performance in the church where the sessions were held) was as difficult to manage as a prima donna displeased over some magnified triviality. ‘He could be coaxed, by appealing to his gentler nature,” explained Gatto, “but meeting his opposition with force seldom succeeded.” One exception he related found the boy’s father playing a stern role, after Enrico, in a fit of temper, had torn from his coat two silver medals given him for singing excellence, and thrown them at the feet of Bronzetti. Administering a slap to Enrico his parent said, “Kneel down, and kiss Father Bronzetti’s hands and feet !”’

—and the boy did so. Thereupon he went almost immediately before the people who sat waiting, “to sing like an angel”’, declared Gatto.

Caruso’s first training in singing and music was received from Maestro Alessandro Fasanaro, who discovered his gifts of voice and expressiveness while teaching his pupil his school hymns. It was Fasanaro who encouraged the little dark-skinned lad; Fasanaro who guided and stimulated him, and by studying his nature appealed to that side of it which could be so easily reached by one willing to exert the patience. A charge of five lire a month was paid, at the beginning, by Mrs. Marcellino Caruso for the privilege of having her son attend the school ; later, as he progressed, Bronzetti refused to take this money. Punctuality, neatness, and industry carried Enrico along. By hard work he finally became the principal soloist of the chorus.

In Naples every church is called upon to participate in various ceremonies. One of them is a religious procession through the streets, which takes on importance through the joining of choirs from different churches. Father Bronzetti’s choir was greatly sought during the period Enrico Caruso served as a member. Maestro Fasanaro, receiving fees from the churches which he visited with his charges, rewarded them with pennies. To his contralto soloist, who always attracted the most notice and favor by his singing, Fasanaro was more liberal ; for Carusiello there was generally several lire. With presents of candy, and sometimes a coin or two from admiring priests, the boy’s earnings were

YOUTH Is enough to make him happy. Yet he seldom kept them; “the hole in the Caruso pocket” had developed even thus early.

His position in the Bronzetti school appears to have been easily and completely taken. He craved companionship, and won it. He could, and did, invite the affection of his elders because of a character they were unable to resist. He was playful and serious, in turn — often unexpectedly so. Gatto tells of suddenly developed moods, when an appearance to sing impended, or had passed; moods which presented the tranquil and lovable Carusiello with an unyielding front, — a strange little person, standing firmly upon a dignity that might have been the more amusing but for its disturbing consequences.

On one occasion, returning to Naples from Amalfi, a neighboring town where the choir had gone to sing the Mercadante Mass in the Church of St. Andrea, Enrico declined obstinately to enter a coach with his mentor and his companions ; he would ride on the box with the coachman. And ride he did, until Gatto, observing that his charge had dropped fast asleep and fearing he might fall under the horses, transferred him bodily to the interior of the coach — where he continued for the remainder of the journey

to slumber placidly.

These evening sessions at the Bronzetti school were fruitful to Carusiello in other respects than music. If Fasanaro and others of the small faculty did their share, there was one of a different calling who must not be overlooked, Giuseppe Spasiano, the penmanship teacher. Quite early during the little pupil’s attendance, Spasiano made his particular discovery: here was a boy with a natural facility to use either pen or pencil. No urging was needed to win his interest; he took to drawing as happily as does the proverbial duck to water. And Spasiano suggested, and corrected, and dropped the necessary words to induce the substitution of pains for speed. Hunched over his desk Carusiello would forget — temporarily, at least — about music. As he acquired skill Spasiano gave him manuscripts to copy, which skill — highly developed in his mature years — came to be of practical use. For it is a curious fact that Caruso learned the words and notes of his opera réles by copying them. He explained that the process assisted materially in impressing them on his memory.

The influence of his instructors in this unpretentious institution appears to have affected the youthful Caruso very positively, in ways that held even after he passed actively out of it, about 1887. Before that he had been taught by Alfredo Campanelli and Domenico Amitrano, pianists and coaches in the Bronzetti school ; and by Giovanni Gatto’s daughter, Amelia, an excellent musician and pianiste. There is some hint that she formed for Caruso a violent attachment, though he was much her junior; but nothing ever came of it. With her the boy studied solfeggi, also solo compositions he was preparing for appearances outside the school.

Eager in his pursuit of knowledge of music and singing, Caruso did not hesitate to accept whatever instruction offered, some of it from sources other than were available at Bronzetti’s. He was only ten

YOUTH 17 when he met Ernesto Schirardi, a pianist, and Maestro Raffaele de Lutio; little more than a baby, yet even then regularly employed for pay. He had bidden farewell to the public school, turning from teachers and comrades to the mechanical laboratory of Salvatore de Luca. His wages were two soldi an hour. Schirardi and de Lutio gave the small Caruso advice as to how he should use his voice, and together they taught him some arias from operas.

During these days he revealed those industrious leanings which, years later, became almost an obsession. He would come home, dead tired, from work; then set himself to some musical task. First, however, he always made himself clean; and he has related how, wishing to surprise his mother, he once bought with some treasured pennies a large sheet of stiff white paper, and cut it into a shirt bosom, which he tucked inside his coat.