((( ENRICO CARUSO )))

MY COMMENT:

I hate opera, but...

there's something about Enrico Caruso 

that inspires me to sing!

I sense that in order for a person to sound great
 in the infancy of recorded music
That person had to be

ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!!!

I sense that, at best, what we have of Enrico Caruso
is a pale example of what he actually sounded like.

Still, there is something about Enrico Caruso
that inspires me to sing and fix my voice
and I'm not picky about where I get my inspiration!

I sense the thing about Caruso
was that his voice was miraculously reliable!
 He could be depended upon to give outrageously excellent performances
 consistently and that is inspiring to me indeed!

Also, I sense, that Caruso single-handedly
 made opera 'cool' to the people of his generation.
All indications are they really, really loved this guy!!!
Just mentioning his name brought a smile
even to the chronically depressed!

Enrico Caruso (Italian pronunciation: [enˈriːko kaˈruːzo]; February 25, 1873 – August 2, 1921) was an Italian tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and North and South America, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. Caruso also made approximately 290 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920. All of these recordings, which span most of his stage career, are available today on CDs and as digital downloads.

Caruso's 1904 recording of "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci was the first sound recording to sell a million copies.^[1]

Caruso's 25-year career, stretching from 1895 to 1920, included 863 appearances at the New York Metropolitan Opera before he died from a kidney infection at the age of 48. Thanks in part to his tremendously popular phonograph records, Caruso was one of the most famous personalities of his day and his fame has lasted into the present time. Caruso is an early example of a global media celebrity, made possible in the 20th Century by new media technology. Beyond records, Caruso's name was made familiar to millions through newspapers, books, magazines, silent film and communication made possible by the telephone and telegraph.^[2] Caruso toured widely both with the Metropolitan Opera touring company and on his own, giving hundreds of performances throughout Europe, and North and South America. He was a client of the noted promoter Edward Bernays, during the latter's tenure as a press agent in the United States. Beverly Sills noted in an interview: "I was able to do it with television and radio and media and all kinds of assists. The popularity that Caruso enjoyed without any of this technological assistance is astonishing."^[3]

Caruso biographers Pierre Key, Bruno Zirato and Stanley Jackson^[4][5] attribute Caruso's fame not only to his voice and musicianship but also to a keen business sense and an enthusiastic embrace of commercial sound recording, then in its infancy. Many opera singers of Caruso's time rejected the phonograph (or gramophone) owing to the low fidelity of early discs. Others, including Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno and Nellie Melba, exploited the new technology once they became aware of the financial returns that Caruso was reaping from his initial recording sessions.^[6]
Caruso made more than 260 extant recordings in America for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) from 1904 to 1920, and he earned millions of dollars in royalties from the retail sales of the resulting 78-rpm discs. (Previously, in Italy in 1902–1903, he had cut five batches of records for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company, the Zonophone label and Pathé Records.) He was also heard live from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1910, when he participated in the first public radio broadcast to be transmitted in the United States.

Caruso appeared also in silent films. These include not only two commercial feature films, but newsreels too, as well as a short experimental film made by Thomas Edison. For Edison, in 1911, Caruso portrayed the role of Edgardo in a filmed scene from Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1918, he appeared in a dual role in the American silent film My Cousin for Paramount Pictures. This movie included a sequence of him on stage performing the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The following year Caruso played a character called Cosimo in another movie, The Splendid Romance. Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 to appear in these two efforts but they both flopped at the box office.

While Caruso sang at such venues as La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he was also the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 18 consecutive seasons. It was at the Met, in 1910, that he created the role of Dick Johnson in Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West.

Caruso's voice extended up to high C in its prime and grew in power and weight as he grew older. He sang a broad spectrum of roles, ranging from lyric, to spinto, to dramatic parts, in the Italian and French repertoires. In the German repertoire, Caruso sang only two roles, Assad (in Karl Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba) and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, both of which he performed in Italian in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 1901 respectively.^[7]

ENRICO CARUSO

ENRICO CARUSO SILLY FACES

((( MIRACLE OF MOTHER'S DAY 2013 )))

This is the house where I was able,

with the help of the Spirit,

to rescue the three children held hostage who were set free

on Mother's Day 2013!

I was challenged by skeptics to use the principles of

The Secret

To rescue those children

As first I didn't want to bother as I've had five near-death experiences

and am looking forward to a noble death

I felt that getting killed by that maniac would be a noble enough death

and those kids had nothing to worry about in facing eternity

Then I was 'nudged' by The Spirit to take up the challenge of the skeptics

The real core of success in such an endeavor

is in developing a borderline obsessive desire to accomplish the miracle

and that is not easy to do with strangers I have not even seen photos of!

It took about somewhere in the area of five to seven hours

of sending inexorably sleepy energy to the guy who apparently

had not slept for about at least two-days

and that, in itself, gave me the faith that I would indeed succeed

and I succeeded!!!!

The police supposedly stormed the house when they saw an opening to do so

and wounded the man who eventually died

and the children were set free even as I envisioned

Of course, the skeptics said I failed even though it was obvious they were wrong,

but you can't expect much from skeptics

They are suffering from a sickness of disbelief

and, outside of direct intervention from the Spirit,

I don't feel there is any cure for their malady

Oh well....