View allAll Photos Tagged Supraphon
youtu.be/l0juyEU_Jkc?feature=shared
Johann Georg Orschler (1698-1770?)
violoncello: Libor Mašek
theorbo: Jan Krejča
organ: Václav Luks
violin: Helena Zemanová, Jana Anýžová
Supraphon, 2013
Můj osobní upír
bydlí támhle za řekou
má dlouhý vlasy
smutný oči a hodnou ženu
(...)
Nacht und Nebel,
tančí po špičkách
Nacht und Nebel
v tichých uličkách.
(Priessnitz: Nacht und Nebel, in: Nebel, Supraphon, 1992)
Působily jako zjevení. Já věděl, proč jsem tady musel zastavit, unavenej, po koncertě, na který jsme jeli přes půl republiky a další půlku měli ještě před sebou.
Byly tam!
Tři spící baruny, které v noci na pondělí ještě vyspávají a čekají na další práci. Ani se nemusím dívat, všechny tři jsou staré a ještě pár měsíců živé známé. Červená 751.119, "Rudý říjen" 751.149, čtyřsvětlový "Zetor", 751.141. Snad každej trochu aktivní fotič je rozeznal zdálky.
Dvě v noci, zima zalézá pod kabát a zmrzlej sníh křoupe pod nohama. Rychle najít jedinou trochu slušnou kompozici, prásknout... A mazat domů. S Priessnitz v hlavě, samozřejmě
A to ještě máme jednu parádní sezonu před sebou. Stay tuned!
1951/52 Schaub Supraphon 52 at the Bremer Rundfunkmuseum.
In germany wire recorders didn't become very famous, but interestingly the Deutsche Bundesbahn (german federal railways) used wire recorders to record the radio traffic between trains and signal boxes.
www.pipedreams.org/episode/2021/09/20/the-principals-of-t...
PROGRAM
Hour One
FRANÇOIS COUPERIN: Plein jeu/Premiere Couplet du Kyrie, fr Messe pour le Couvents –Aude Heurtematte (1768 Clicquot/St. Gervaise, Paris) Raven 153
LOUIS COUPERIN: Prelude (No. 46) –Davitt Moroney (1714 Boizard/St. Michel-en-Thiérache, France) Temperaments 316001-2-3
PAUL HOFHAIMER: Recordare –Herbert Tachezi (1558 Ebert/Court Chapel, Innsbruch, Austria) Teldec 9031-77606
JUAN BERMUDO: Ave maris stella –Andrés Cea (1560 Anonymous/Evora Cathedral, Portugal) Almaviva 0117
LOUIS MARCHAND: Fond d’orgue –Marina Tchebourkina (1995 Boisseau & Cattiaux/Versailles Chapel, France) Natives 05
J. S. BACH: Fantasy in c, BWV 562 –Ewald Kooiman (1732 A. Silbermann/St. Maurice Abbey, Ebersmünster, France) Aeolus 10761/3
JOHANN PACHELBEL: 4 Magnificat Fugues on the 6th Tone –Jürgen Essl (1782 Stumm/St. Stephen’s Church, Simmern, Germany) cpo 777 557
EDWIN T. CHILDS: Come, ye faithful –Brenda Portman (1992 Schantz/College Church, Wheaton, IL) Hood Music 3
ANONYMOUS: Adesto-Firmissime fidem teneamus-Alleluia, fr Robertsbridge Codex –Pieter van Dijk (1511 van Covelens/St, Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, Netherlands) Contrapunctus Musicus 2497
DIETERICH BUXTEHUDE: Passacaglia in d, BuxWV 161 –Martin Rost (1659 Stellwagen/St Mary’s Church, Stralsund, Germany) MD&G 320 1624
GIOVANNI VALENTINI: Canzona in g. J. C. KERLL: Versus secondi toni –Léon Berben (1714 König/Premonstratensian Abbey, Niederehe, Germany) Aeolus 10441
Hour Two
GIROLAMO FRESCOBALDI: Toccata No. 5 –Ton Koopman (1726 Fedeli/San Barnardin Basilica/Aquila, Italy) Erato 4509-96544
J. J. FROBERGER: Canzona No. 2 –Roland Götz (1776 Holzhey/Ursberg Cloister, Germany) Studio XVII Augsburg 96522
JOHANNES BRAHMS: Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele, Op. 122, no. 5 –Jean Bizot (1881 Dalstein & Haerpfer/St. Sebastian, Nancy, France) Gaupillat 2010
BACH: Herzlich tut mich verlangen, BWV 727 –Olivier Latry (1868 Cavaillé-Coll/Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris) La Dolce Volta 69
ORLANDO GIBBONS: 2 Fantasias –John Toll (1693 Anonymous/Adlington Hall, Cheshire, England) Linn 125
HENRY PURCELL: Voluntary in G –Jan-Willem Jansen (1739 Clicquot/Eglise St. Jacques et St. Christophe, Houdan, France) Chamade 5621
BERNARDO PASQUINI: Fuga –Sergio Vartolo (1653 Dallam/Eglise St. Brandan, Lanvellec, France) K617 039
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Prelude & Fugue in c, Op. 37, no. 1 –Jaroslav Tůma (1843 Spaniel/Holy Family Church, Rychnov Chateau, Czech Republic) Supraphon 3403-2 131
MELCHIOR SCHILDT: Allein Gott in der Höh –Léon Berben (1624 Scherer/St. Stephanuskirche, Tangermünde, Germany) Aeolus 11121
BACH: Contrapuncti Nos. 1 & 2, fr Art of Fugue –Håkan Wikman (1658 van Hagerbeer/Niewe Kerk, Haarlem, Netherlands) Finlandia 4509-98990
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 100/76, 1976. Photo: Linke.
Helena Vondráčková (1947) is a Czech singer and actress whose career has spanned five decades. She is the best-selling singer ever in her country. The Czech pop diva also appeared in films and stage musicals.
Helena Vondráčková was born in 1947, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (present day Czech Republic). Vondráčková spent her childhood years in the town of Slatiňany. She took piano lessons from an early age. In 1964 Vondráčková came to prominence when she won a national talent contest. She made her first recording: a Czech rendering of "Red River Valley" entitled "Červená řeka". In 1965, the year she graduated from high school, Vondráčková was voted the most popular singer in Czechoslovakia by the readers of the magazine Mladý svět earning the Golden Nightingale award. Vondráčková would subsequently earn second or third place a total of twenty-seven times with eleven Silver Nightingale awards and sixteen Bronze Nightingale awards. In the summer of 1966 Vondráčková began her music festival career competing in the inaugural Bratislavská Lýra festival as a duo with Marta Kubišová: their entry "Oh Baby Baby" earned the second-place Silver Lyre award. Vondráčková's music festival debut as a solo act was at the Rio de Janeiro International Music Festival in November 1967 where her entry "Vzdálený hlas" received the Golden Rooster award: in June 1968 Vondráčková returned to Bratislavska Lyra in a duo with Waldemar Matuška. It resulted in a Bronze Lyre award for their song "To se nikdo nedoví". In 1969, Vondráčková participated in the European Cup Festival in Knokke Belgium. In 1968, she also appeared in the witty and charming fairytale film Sílene smutná princezna/The Incredibly Sad Princess (Borivoj Zeman, 1968). In communist Czechoslovakia talented filmmakers often took refuge from politically problematic films in the genre of fairy-tales, which became extremely celebrated and well known in the Eastern block. Vondrácková later appeared also in such films as Zpívající film (Vladimír Sís, 1973), with Waldemar Matuska, and Jen ho nechte, at se bojí/Let Him Face the Music! (Ladislav Rychman, 1978).
Vondráčková reached #1 on the Czechoslovakian hit parade in September 1967 with "Nedoufej" a rendering of the Sonny & Cher hit "Little Man": this was one of a number of Czech language cover versions Vondráčková cut for the Supraphon label, others being ""Pátá"" ("Downtown"), "Chytila Jsem Motýlka" ("I Only Want to Be with You") and "Růže kvetou dál", a rendering of the Gilbert Becaud hit "L'Important c'est la Rose" which afforded Vondráčková a second #1 in November 1967 and remaining in the Top Ten until March 1968. Vondráčková returned to the Top Ten in 1968 with "Hej, Pane Zajíci!" a duet with Marta Kubišova and also with a Czech-language rendering of "Gli Occhi iei" entitled "Utíkej". Vondráčková's debut album appeared in 1969: entitled "Růže kvetou dál it was a compilation of her singles released from 1964 on. Vondráčková had met up with singers Václav Neckář and Marta Kubišová through performing at the Rokoko Palace in Prague and had on occasion collaborated with one or both of them since December 1965, Vondráčková and Kubišová having reached #2 on the Czechoslovakian hit parade in the summer of 1966 with their duet "Oh Baby Baby". In January 1968 Vondráčková performed as a group with Neckář and Kubišová at a Czech music showcase presented at the MIDEM trade fair in Cannes with a resultant month-long gig for the trio at the Olympia Theatre in Paris. On 1 November 1968 Vondráčková, Neckář and Kubišová officially consolidated as an act known as the 'Golden Kids', the group recording two albums and making extensive live and televised appearances in Czechoslovakia and Germany before being forced to disband in February 1970 as Kubišová was banned from performing due to her outspoken opposition to the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. On 3 November 1994 the members of the Golden Kids reunited for a concert at the Lucerna Palace in Prague which was filmed for television broadcast with a concert album also being released.
In the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Helena Vondráčková and other veteran Czech pop stars underwent a career decline due to being closely associated with Czechoslovakia's period of Communist rule. In 1992 Vondráčková made her stage musical debut as Fantine in a production of Les Misérables mounted at the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague. She reprised the role in a revival of Les Misérables in 2003. From 1997 Vondráčková was frequently showcased on TV Nova and in 2000 she returned to the mainstream recording scene with Vodopád, a fifteen track album of Czech original dance tracks which, spearheaded by the single "Dlouhá noc", reached Platinum status selling 35,000 copies. Over the course of the first decade of the new century, Vondráčková continued to release records to commercial acclaim as well as performing in a number of well-received concerts. In 2000, she also published her memoir "I Remember and I Don't Regret Anything". In 2006, Vondráčková appeared in the Slovak version of the TV show Dancing With the Stars, and a year later she also appeared in the Polish version. In 2007 she was awarded the Diamond Record for half million sold records in 2007. In 2009 Vondráčková returned to the musical stage in an original musical entitled Mona Lisa written by Josef Bohuslav and Michal David, and from 2015 on, she played the lead role of Donna in the Czech production of Mamma Mia! Helena Vondráčková lived with lyricist Zdeněk Rytíř for four years parting in 1969. Her first husband was East German musician Helmut Sickel whom she met at the Sopot International Song Festival in 1977 (he was then the bass player for Kreis). They married in 1983, but divorced in 2001. In 2003 Vondráčková married Martin Michal a businessman twelve years younger than her, who she had met in 2000 and who has since acted as her manager. Helena is the aunt of actress Lucie Vondrácková.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
This Helsinki streetcar was advertising and upcoming production of Leoš Janáček's opera The Cunning Little Vixen, also known (by whom?) as Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears.
About the Finnish National Opera:
The Finnish National Opera (Finnish: Suomen Kansallisooppera; Swedish: Finlands Nationalopera) is a Finnish opera company based in Helsinki. Its home base is the Opera House on Töölönlahti bay in Töölö, which opened in 1993, and is state-owned through Senate Properties. The Opera House features two auditoriums, the main auditorium with 1,350, seats and a smaller studio auditorium with 300-500 seats.
Regular opera performances began in Finland in 1873 with the founding of the Finnish Opera by Kaarlo Bergbom.
Prior to that, opera had been performed in Finland sporadically by touring companies, and on occasion by Finnish amateurs, the first such production being The Barber of Seville in 1849.
However, the Finnish Opera company soon plunged into a financial crisis and folded in 1879. During its six year's of operation, Bergbom’s opera company had given 450 performances of a total of 26 operas, and the company had managed to demonstrate that opera can be sung in Finnish too.
After the disbandment of the Finnish Opera, the opera audiences of Helsinki had to confine themselves to performances of visiting opera companies and occasional opera productions at the Finnish National Theatre.
The reincarnation of the Finnish opera institution took place about 30 years later. A group of notable social and cultural figures, led by the international star soprano Aino Ackté, founded the Domestic Opera in 1911.
From the very beginning, the opera decided to engage both foreign and Finnish artists. A few years later the Domestic Opera was renamed the Finnish Opera in 1914.
In 1956, the Finnish Opera was, in turn, taken over by the Foundation of the Finnish National Opera, and acquired its present name.
Between 1918 and 1993 the home of the opera was the Alexander Theater, which had been assigned to the company on a permanent basis. The home was inaugurated with an opening performance of Verdi’s Aida.
When the first dedicated opera house in Finland was finally completed and inaugurated in 1993, the old opera house was given back its original name, the Alexander Theater, after the Tsar Alexander II.
The Finnish National Opera has some 30 permanently engaged solo singers, a professional choir of 60 singers and its own orchestra of 120 members. The Ballet has 90 dancers from 17 countries. All together, the opera has a staff of 735.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_National_Opera
About The Cunning Little Vixen:
The Cunning Little Vixen (Czech: Příhody lišky Bystroušky, lit. 'Adventures of the vixen known as Sharp-Ears', and, until the 1970s, generally referred to in English as Adventures of Vixen Sharp-Ears) is a Czech language opera by Leoš Janáček, composed 1921 to 1923.
Its libretto was adapted by the composer from a serialized novella (daily comic) by Rudolf Těsnohlídek and Stanislav Lolek, which was first published in the newspaper Lidové noviny.
The opera incorporates Moravian folk music and rhythms as it recounts the life of a clever (i.e. sharp-eared, in a pun) fox and accompanying wildlife, as well as a few humans, and their small adventures while traversing their lifecycles.
Described as a comic opera, it has nonetheless been noted to contain a serious theme. Interpretations of the work remain varied, ranging from children's entertainment to a tragedy.
Title translation difficulty:
Broken down from the original Czech, the title is
Příhody = Tales (or Adventures),
lišky = of Vixen (i.e. genitive case, one fox, female),
Bystroušky = Sharp-Ears (double meaning: pointed [ears], clever, sly).
There is no mention in the Czech of a diminutive ("little"), although this idea is included in both the German (Das schlaue Füchslein) and recent (since 1980s) English versions of the opera's name.
It was probably the German name, used for the 1965 Felsenstein film, that established the English "cunning little", ignoring the important double meaning in "Sharp-Ears."
The first three audio recordings, all from the Czech company Supraphon (Neumann 1957, Gregor 1972, Neumann 1980) used, naturally, the original Czech name. Then Decca recorded the opera with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1981, and this widely circulated release made The Cunning Little Vixen the international, if inaccurate, standard.
When Janáček discovered Těsnohlídek's comic-strip-inspired story and decided to turn it into an opera, he began work by meeting with the author and beginning a study of animals.
With this understanding of the characters involved, his own 70 years of life experience, and an undying, unrequited love for the much younger, married Kamila Stösslová, he began work on the opera.
He transformed the originally comedic cartoon into a philosophical reflection on the cycle of life and death by including the death of the vixen. As with other operas by older composers, this late opera shows a deep understanding of life leading to a return to simplicity.
It was given its premiere performance on 6 November 1924 in National Theatre Brno conducted by František Neumann, with Ota Zítek as director and Eduard Milén as stage designer.
The opera received its Italian premiere at La Scala in 1958 with Mariella Adani in the title role.
The work was first staged in England in 1961 by the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (now the English National Opera) under the direction of Colin Graham, with conductor Colin Davis, and with scenery and costume designs by Barry Kay.
In 1981, the New York City Opera mounted a production in English based on images created by Maurice Sendak and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas in his company debut.
It starred soprano Gianna Rolandi as Vixen Sharp-Ears and baritone Richard Cross as the Forester.
Glyndebourne Festival Opera staged it in 2012, directed by Melly Still, and a revival is included in the Glyndebourne Festival for 2016 with Christopher Purves as the Forester and Elena Tsallagova as the Vixen, conductor Jakub Hrůša and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
In May 2014 the Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst performed an innovative version directed by Yuval Sharon. This production returned the opera to its roots by utilizing animation and hand drawn video sets by the artists Bill Barminski and Christopher Louie of Walter Robot Studios. The production featured the use of hole-in-the-wall carnival cutouts to place the singers heads on the animated bodies of the animal characters.
Czech postcard by Nakladatelstvi Pressfoto, Praha, no. C 11148. Photo: Vileru Rosegnal.
On 1 October 2019. Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 3094. Karel Gott in Ta nase písnicka ceská/The Czech song (Zdenek Podskalský, 1967).
On 1 October 2019, Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Portrait of Liam taken at The Diskery in Bromsgrove Street Birmingham on June 6th. 2015.
"I see this portrait as a companion piece to my image of Jimmy Shannon with whom Liam worked for many years. In my mind they are a double act. In it he is wearing a tee shirt designed by his teenage son Oscar. It bears the legend Art is Long".
Garry Corbett.
Liam Scully had a desire to be either a painter or an album cover designer. His school careers adviser recommended that he should go to work for a printers. Advice which Liam ignored. Instead he became as he puts it "a musical inmate of Birmingham's most illustrious vinyl record dealer". He has worked at The Diskery for 44 years and with the recent retirement of Jimmy Shannon after 47 years is now the 'oldest inmate'. He was born in 1952. Significantly this was the year that the pop charts were first compiled and the year of The Diskery's embryonic beginning.
His twin passions in life are music and art. His passion for the latter led to his paintings being exhibited on numerous occasions in Birmingham's RBSA Gallery.
Take Five.
Liam recommends the following five a day.
The Greatest Album Covers Of All Time (a book by Barry Miles, Grant Scott & Johnny Morgan)
Carl Orff's Choral Work Carmina Burana (Czech Philharmonic Chorus & Instrumental Ensemble - Supraphon 2SUP0025).
The Complete Works of EST (it doesn't exist as such but these albums are inseperable)
Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Last Judgement (to be viewed while listening to Orff's music!)
Wine - a favourite Australian Shiraz Bushland (Aldi £4.59)
A generic 10-inch record sleeve of the major Czechoslovakian record label Supraphon.
(the late 1950s or the early 1960s)
..............................................................................
Part of the Printed ephemera set.
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
A decorative plate from the Supraphon NC410 turntable featuring beautiful curved constructivist lettering. I'm sure it would have been appreciated by Neville Brody, some two decades later.
Czechoslovakia, Late 1960s
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
East-German postcard by Progress Starfoto, no. 2376, 1965. Karel Gott in Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965).
On 1 October 2019. Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
East-German postcard by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 113/77. Photo: Mirvald.
On 1 October 2019. Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
Czech postcard by Nakladatelstvi Pressfoto, Praha, no. C 23365-3. Photo: Jaromir Svoboda.
On 1 October 2019. Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
German promotion card by Polydor, no. 49.
Schlager singer Karel Gott (1939) is the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, who also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has since exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acts regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He is also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married on in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
Martinu Toccata • Sinfonietta • La Joula - Kosler Supraphon
Cover design: Milan Jaros
Cover art: Emil Filla "The Reader", 1913
Czech postcard by Nakladatelstvi Pressfoto, Praha, no. 53/3. Photo: Alexandr Janovsky.
On 1 October 2019. Schlager singer and actor Karel Gott (1939-2019) passed away. He was the most successful male singer of the Czech Republic, and also had many successes in the German-speaking countries. He released more than 125 albums during his career, selling over 30 million records worldwide. In the annual national poll Český slavík, ‘the Sinatra of the East’ was thirty-eight times elected as the Most Favourite Male Singer.
Karel Gott was born in 1939 in Pilsen, at that time Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, now Plzeň, Czech Republic, and has lived in Prague since age 6. He initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the School of Industrial Art, upon which he began training as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but was soon fascinated by the new types of music flooding the city, and became interested in jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying it privately. In 1958, he participated in the amateur singing contest Looking for New Talent in the Prague Slavonic House. He utterly failed to impress the judges, but soon made a name for himself in Prague jazz circles, finally getting his first engagement at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year. In 1960, he decided to undertake singing professionally. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the brilliant Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces, but also in the hits of the day. It was at this time that Gott traveled abroad (to Poland) for the first time with the Jazz Orchestra of the Czechoslovak Broadcast, conducted by Karel Krautgartner. In 1962 or 1963 (the sources differ), Gott released his first single, Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old), a duet with jazz singer Vlasta Průchová. Gott was voted into the Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) viewer's survey, placing 49th and receiving a total of three votes. His first solo single, Mesicni reka, the Czech version of Moon River became his breakthrough hit in 1962. In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Prague Semafor theater, which was then at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovakian pop music scene. He released Oči sněhem zaváté (Eyes Covered by Snow), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of his Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965, Karel Gott was a major star, appearing in the programs Pilgrimage for Two and Evening Prayer while building his own repertoire with his own orchestra. That year, he made his first film appearance in the musical Kdyby tisíc klarinetu/If a Thousand Clarinets (Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek, 1965) with Jana Brejchová. He also established the Apollo Theater, along with two brothers who were with him in Semafor: Jiří and Ladislav Štaidl. He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. His first album, Karel Gott Sings got great acclaim. This first album was followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. In 1967, Gott performed at MIDEM, the International Fair of Record Companies and Music Producers in Cannes, France, where the applause was measured during every concert. He surprised everyone by achieving a level of 54 to Tom Jones' 58. Following this event, Gott signed a contract with the Polydor / Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft record company, renewing it several times until it became a life contract in 1997. Between 1967 and 2000, Polydor released over 125 albums and 72 singles for Karel Gott in German speaking countries in Europe. Films in which he appeared were Mucedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love (Jan Nemec, 1967) with British director Lindsay Anderson, and the German comedy Charley's Onkel/Charley’s Uncle (Werner Jacobs, 1969) featuring Gustav Knuth. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, written by Udo Jürgens. He finished in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing daily at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. In the 1970s, domestic success was marked by Gott's presence on television, including the filming of a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In 1971, after deciding not to return from a concert tour in West Germany to his home country, he was addressed a personal letter from the Czechoslovak party leader Gustav Husak persuading him to change his mind. One of his most best-known pop hits was the title music to the Japanese anime series Maya the Honey Bee (1975). The original theme was composed by Karel Svoboda and sung by Karel Gott in the German, Czech and Slovak versions. In 1975 he also played the lead in the film musical Hvezda pada vzhuru/A Star Is Falling Upwards (Ladislav Rychman, 1975). Karel Gott recorded a cover version of the song All by Myself called Kam tenkrát šel můj bratr Jan (Where Did My Brother Jan Go This Time). The song was dedicated to Jan Palach who set himself on fire and burned to death as a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in January 1969. According to Wikipedia, the song was recorded in 1977 while Soviet troops were still present in the country. In order to continue in his career, he had to sign in 1977 the so-called ‘Anti-charter’, a petition organized by the Communist government against the Charter 77 signed by Václav Havel and other dissidents, protesting the government's violations of the Helsinki Accords.
The 1980s were marked for Karel Gott by international success, including the filming in Italy of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto (1981), with a corresponding German-Italian album and duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union.The following years, Gott received many awards, including The Supraphon Diamond Record Award, given him in 1992, for having sold 13 million records. In 1990, he decided to end his career and arranged a huge farewell tour. However, the tour was so successful that he re-evaluated his decision. The 1990s were influenced by fundamental changes in the political system of the country, which were reflected in popular music, but it did not threaten his permanent position in the limelight of the domestic music scene. In 1991 a new television survey was created called TýTý. Karel Gott gained the first victory and at the same time became the outright winner of the survey. In 1993, he established his own artistic agency, GOJA, with František Janeček. It is this agency that currently produces Gott's records and organizes his artistic activities. In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won 'The Golden Nightingale Award' with a huge lead over his rivals, and has retained the accolade every year since [2008]. He remains popular in a number of countries, including those of the former Soviet Union, where his first record, produced by Melodiya in 1977, sold a staggering 4.5 million copies. In 2000, he had his first concert in Carnegie Hall, New York. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus increasingly on painting, his second great love. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery. He has exhibited his work successfully in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava. In 2001, he played the double role of Lucifer and God in the family comedy Z pekla stestí 2/Goblins and Good Luck 2 (Zdenek Troska, 2001). He also acted regularly in TV series. Gott has two adult daughters (Dominika and Lucie) from former relationships (they have different mothers). He was also the father to Charlotte Ella with Ivana Macháčková whom he married in 2008 in Las Vegas, the city where he started his international career. Their second daughter, Nelly Sofie, was born in summer 2008. Karel Gott passed away in Prague, Czech Republic, at the age of 80.
Sources: Jan Adam (KarelGott.com), Zuzana Drotárová (Gott.cz), Steve Leggett (AllMusic), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.
#enrico-picciotto, enrico picciotto
Enrico Caruso’s ascendancy coincided with the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world of opera was moving away from the contrived bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style, with its emphasis on artifice and vibrato, to a verismo (“realism”) approach. The warmth and sincerity of his voice—and personality— shone in this more natural style and set the standard for contemporary greats like Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, and José Carreras. Through his exploitation of the nascent phonograph industry, Caruso is also largely responsible for the sweeping interest in opera of the 1910s and ’20s. And for this, Stanley Jackson wrote in his book Caruso, he may never be rivaled, for later tenors could not hope to find themselves in a similarly fortuitous position and thus would most certainly “find it more difficult to win such universal affection as the bubbly, warm-hearted little Neapolitan whose voice soared and sobbed from the first wheezy phonographs to bring a new magic into countless lives.”
Born in Naples, Italy, in 1873, the third of seven children (early sources erroneously state that he was the 18th of 21), Caruso was raised in squalor. His birthplace, according to Jackson, was a “two-storeyed house, flaky with peeling stucco, [accommodating] several families, who shared a solitary cold-water tap on the landing, and like every other dwelling in that locality it lacked indoor sanitation.” As a boy, Caruso received very little formal education; his only training in a social setting came from his church choir, where he displayed a pure voice and a keen memory for songs. More often than not, however, he skipped choir practice to sing with street minstrels for café patrons.
At the age of ten Caruso began working a variety of menial jobs—mechanic, jute weaver—but his passion for singing often led him back to the streets. Eight years later, an aspiring baritone named Eduardo Missiano heard Caruso singing by a local swimming pool. Impressed, Missiano took Caruso to his voice teacher, Guglielmo Vergine. Vergine on hearing Caruso, compared the tenor’s voice to “the wind whistling through the chimney,” Michael Scott recounted in The Great Caruso. Although he disliked Caruso’s Neapolitan café style, flashy gestures, and unrefined and unrestrained vocalizing, Vergine finally agreed to accept Caruso as his student. But “the lessons ended after three years,” John Kobler wrote in American Heritage, “and Caruso’s formal musical training thereafter remained almost as meager as his scholastic education. He could read a score only with difficulty. He played no musical instrument. He sang largely by ear.”
On March 15, 1895, Caruso made his professional debut in L’Amico Francesco, a now-forgotten opera by an amateur composer. He was not an immediate sensation.
For the Record…
Bom Errico Caruso (adopted more formal Enrico for stage), February 27 (some sources say 25), 1873, in Naples, Italy; died of pneumonia and peritonitis in 1921 in Naples; son of Marcellino (a mechanic) and Anna (Baldini) Caruso; married Dorothy Park Benjamin, 1918; children: Gloria; (with Ada Giachetti) Rodolfo, Enrico Jr. Education: Studied voice with Guglielmo Vergine, 1891-94, and Vincenzo Lombardi, 1896-97.
Worked as laborer, including jobs as mechanic and jute weaver, beginning c. 1883; debuted in L’Amico Francesco at Teatro Nuovo, Naples, 1894; expanded repertoire to include La Traviata, Rigoletto, Aida, and Faust, among others; first sang Canio in I Pagliacci, 1896, and Rodolfo in La Bohème, 1897; debuted in La Bohème at La Scala, Milan, 1899; performed internationally, including appearances in Moscow, Buenos Aries, Monte Carlo, and London, beginning in 1899; made first recordings, 1902; debuted in U.S. at Metropolitan Opera, New York City, 1903. Appeared in silent films My Cousin and A Splendid Romance, 1918; subject of fictional film biography The Great Caruso, 1950.
Awards: Order of the Commendatore of the Crown of Italy; Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honor; Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia; honorary captain of the New York City Police Department.
His vocal range was limited; he often had to transpose the musical score down a halftone since he had trouble in the upper register, especially hitting high C. But impresarios who heard Caruso recognized his innate gift and cast him in significant productions such as Faust, Rigoletto, and La Traviata. With stage experience and brief training with another vocal teacher, Vincenzo Lombardo, the singer made steady progress, refining the natural beauty of his voice.
“Who Has Sent You to Me? God?”
In 1897, studying for the part of Rodolpho in Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Caruso went to the composer’s villa to secure Puccini’s consent of his interpretation. As told by author Jackson, after Caruso sang a few measures of the first-act aria, “Che gelida manima,” Puccini “swivelled in his chair and murmured in amazement, ’Who has sent you to me? God?’”
Caruso’s instrument was “a voice of the South, full of warmth, charm, and lusciousness,” described a commentator of the era who was quoted in Howard Greenfeld’s book Caruso. But what truly set Caruso apart—from his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors—was his ability to eliminate the space between singer and listener, to intensify “the emotional effects upon his audience,” testified American Heritage contributor Kobler. “His vocalized feelings, variously spiritual, earthy, carnal, seemed to resonate within the hearer’s body. Rosa Ponselle, the American soprano who made her debut opposite Caruso, called it “a voice that loves you.’”
And his timbre was matched by sheer power; at the height of his career, Caruso gave concerts in venues as large as New York City’s Yankee Stadium without microphones and was clearly heard by all. Still, he reached his greatest audience, across both distance and time, through the small, recorded medium of the phonograph. “Few performers deserve . . . recognition more than Caruso,” David Hamilton proclaimed in the New York Times. “[His] records made him the universal model for later generations of tenors, while his reputation played a major role in establishing the phonograph socially and economically.”
Recording Pioneer
Caruso made his first recording on April 11, 1902, in a hotel suite in Milan, Italy. Over the remaining 19 years of his life he made an additional 488 recordings, almost all for the Victor label. He earned more than two million dollars from recording alone, the company almost twice that. But, most important, his recordings brought grand opera to the uninitiated. Millions cried along with his version of Canio’s sobbing “Vesti la giubba,” from/Pagliacci. The development of the American opera audience from a rarefied community at the turn of the century to a diverse populace in modern times can be directly attributed to Caruso’s recordings.
But Caruso’s allure was not solely the result of his singing. “Quick to laughter and to tears, amorous, buffoonish,... speaking a comically fractured English, round and paunchy, Caruso presented an image that appealed enormously to multitudes of ordinary Americans,” Kobler pointed out. Indeed, his offstage behavior was as interesting to the public as that of his onstage personas. He had numerous affairs with women, which often ended in court. He had an 11-year relationship, beginning in 1897, with soprano Ada Giachetti, who had left her husband and son for the much younger tenor. She bore Caruso two sons, then ran off with the family chauffeur. Three years later, Giachetti sued Caruso for attempting to damage her career and for theft of her jewelry. The suit was eventually dismissed.
Offstage Shenanigans
Caruso was not exonerated, however, in what became known as the “Monkey House Case.” On November 16, 1906, Caruso went to the Monkey House in the Central Park Zoo, one of his favorite retreats in his adopted hometown of New York City. There a young woman accused him of pinching her bottom. A policeman on the scene immediately took Caruso—confused and sobbing—to jail. The woman failed to appear at the consequent trial, and police were unable to produce any witnesses other than the arresting officer, who turned out to have been best man at the accuser’s wedding. The judge found Caruso guilty of disorderly conduct and fined him ten dollars. The public, for its part, though initially unsure of Caruso’s innocence, soon returned to its thunderous approval of his performances.
Despite these episodes, Caruso’s life outside the theater was not entirely tumultuous. His marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin in 1918 was happy and secure. His celebrated earnings allowed him to collect art, stamps, and coins. His clothing and furnishings were luxurious. He ate with gusto. And he was extremely generous. A gifted caricaturist, Caruso often gave drawings away. He would fill his pockets with gold coins and shower stagehands with them at the end of Christmastime productions. He also supported many family members, gave numerous charity concerts, and helped raise millions of dollars for the Allied cause during World War I. This remarkable man even paid his taxes early. “If I wait, something might happen to me, then it would be hard to collect,” Caruso reasoned, as recounted by Kobler. “Now I pay, then if something happen to me the money belongs to the United States, and that is good.”
Caruso’s expansive approach to life, however, rendered his own short. Constant recording and performance demands and the singer’s unchecked appetites took their toll on his health; he died in Naples, in 1921, from pneumonia and peritonitis. He was 48 years old. “Caruso may have been a greater master of comedy than tragedy,” Great Caruso author Scott wrote, “yet there was no levity in his approach to his art, for as each year passed and he became an ever more celebrated singer, his fame—ably demonstrated by frequent new issues of ever improving records—made increasing demands of him. In those last years he rode a tiger.”
Selected discography
Enrico Caruso: 21 Favorite Arias, RCA, 1987.
Enrico Caruso, Pearl, 1988.
Enrico Caruso in Arias, Duets, and Songs, Supraphon, 1988.
Caruso in Opera, Nimbus, 1989.
Caruso in Song, Nimbus, 1990.
The Compíete Caruso, BMG Classics, 1990.
Enrico Caruso in Opera: Early New York Recordings (1904-06), Conifer, 1990.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 1 (1902-1908), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 2 (1908-1912), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 3 (1912-1916), Pearl, 1991.
The Caruso Edition: Volume 4 (1916-1921),, Pearl, 1991.
Caruso in Ensemble, Nimbus, 1992.
Addio Mia Bella Napoli, Replay/Qualiton, 1993.
Sources
Books
Caruso, Enrico, Jr., and Andrew Farkas, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, Amadeus Press, 1990.
Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, Putnam, 1983.
Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, Stein & Day, 1972.
Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, Knopf, 1988.
Periodicals
American Heritage, February/March 1984.
Economist, March 9, 1991.
New Republic, August 8, 1988.
New York Times, January 6, 1991.
—Rob Nagel
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