CARUSO, ENRICO (1873-1921), the most famous Italian operatic tenor of his day, was born in Naples on Feb. 25, 1873. He was early apprenticed to a mechanical engineer. He began to sing in the choirs at Naples when he was 11 years old, and later studied under Guglielmo Vergine. He made his debut in 1894 in L'Amico Francesco at the Teatro Nuovo, Naples, and first won marked success as Marcello in La Boheme, at Milan, in 1898. From 1899 to 1903 he was at St. Petersburg (Leningrad) in the winter, and in the summer at Buenos Aires. He appeared also in Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, Paris, London and elsewhere. In America he first appeared in 1903 at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, where for 18 years he was the leading tenor. Caruso had a very extensive repertory, which was however con fined to works of the French and Italian schools; he never ap peared in Wagnerian opera, being content with the unrivalled su premacy which he enjoyed in works of the kind best adapted to display his particular powers and with which he was most in sympathy. Among these may be named Aida, Carmen, Les Huguenots, L'Elisir d'Amore, Pagliacci, Rigoletto, Samson and Delilah, and last but not least, Puccini's La Boheme in which, to the no less incomparable Mimi of Dame Melba, he celebrated some of his greatest triumphs as Rodolfo. Caruso's voice was of the purest Italian type, being especially distinguished by the warmth and richness of its quality while in all technical respects his singing was of the highest order. He died of pleurisy on Aug. 2, 1921, at Naples.
See D. B. Caruso and T. Goddard, Wings of Song (1928).