Enrico and mario

When I was in Martinique in 1962, I saw the magnificent grand opera house and I remembered my grandpapa’s story. Actually, he had many of Caruso‘s recordings which he played on the Victrola — a gramaphone for 78 RPM discs. Sometimes he would sing operatic arias and coach my brother and me to “breathe from the belly” and sing along with him.

Recently I saw The Great Caruso for the fourth or fifth time on TCM Channel 82. My mind flashed back to Pappy standing on the back steps of our house singing his solos. How he would have enjoyed Mario Lanza’s performance as Caruso! It is said that when Enrico went for an audition at the opera hall in La Scala in Italy, he was told that his voice was like the wind making noise in the shutters of the window.

Yet, even today, Caruso is still regarded as perhaps the most outstanding operatic tenor of all time. He was born in Naples in 1873 and sang most of the great tenor roles in Italian and French opera. He was one of the first great singers to make recordings. Caruso sang at opera houses throughout the world including Martinique and was the leading tenor with the Metropolitan Opera Company from 1903 until his death. He sang over 40 leading roles, those in Rigoletto, Tosca, I Pagliacci being the most famous.

Enrico Caruso died in 1921 and Alfred Arnold Cocozza, known to the world as Mario Lanza was born of Spanish-Italy parents in Philadelphia, USA on January 31, 1922. Like Caruso’s his early childhood was fraught with poverty. His father, a crippled veteran of the first World War, was an enthusiastic fan of Caruso and bought all the Caruso’s records he could find. From childhood, Mario heard these recordings and before he went for an audition he had learned to sing the chief arias from over 50 operas.

Mario Lanza’s father always wanted him to be a singer but his grandfather felt Mario should have a steady job so he became a truck driver. When the famous Russian born orchestral conductor Sergei Koussevitzky heard Mario sing, he said, “Yours is a voice such as is heard once in a hundred years.”

After appearing in three films, Lanza’s dream came true when he played the title role in The Great Caruso. The movie traces Caruso’s life from a street singer for pennies thrown into his hat to the time he became the most famous opera singer who sang before presidents, kings, queens and emperors.

Once upon a performance in New York, crowds of people who could not afford to pay for the more expensive seats, waited just to get a glimpse of the great man entering his carriage. Seeing how disappointed they were, to their great delight, he stood up and sang for the throng.

In Argentina, the lead baritone lost his voice and instead of cancelling the production, the baritone mimed singing while Caruso with his back to the audience, sang the part in a baritone voice.

When it was Caruso’s turn to sing he restored to his natural tenor voice. Before going on stage, the great Caruso, a great believer in the Creator, would kneel in his dressing room and say a short prayer.

Enrico Caruso Jr, a tenor in his own right, wrote in Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family published in 1990, “Mario Lanza excelled in both the classical and the light popular repertory, an accomplishment that was beyond even my father’s exceptional talents.” Mario died of a heart attack in 1959.

When the teacher asked the teenagers what they would like to be when they grow up, a pupil said, “Miss, I would like to be a psychiatrist.” Everyone applauded but laughed when he said seriously, “I would like to be another Sigmund Fraud.”