Documentary Enrico Caruso: The Greatest Singer in the World

Directed by Giuliana Muscio, produced by Ministero Degli Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale

On the centenary of his death, the documentary tells the American career of Enrico Caruso, with a new look that reveals, through unpublished materials, the modernity of his relationship with the media and underlines the fundamental contribution of Italian performers in the development of the American entertainment industry.

The film uses photos and documents from the collection donated by Dorothy Benjamin, Caruso's American wife, to Peabody Institute in Baltimore, from the very rich collection of the Metropolitan Opera Archive, from Museo Enrico Caruso of Villa Bellosguardo, and  from home movies of the orchestra director Giulio Setti, preserved by fondazione Ansaldo, as well as newsreels and the silent film My Cousin (1918), recently restored by the Cineteca di Bologna. The documentary therefore focuses on his American experience, allowing to appreciate Caruso's innovative approach to the media (press, record industry and cinema) and the role of his success in changing the image of Italian emigration to the United States.

The record industry was born thanks to his voice, when, in 1902, in Milan, he agreed to record some songs for Fred Gainsberg of Gramophone and Typewriter Co., which, as the name implies, had not until then had a musical destination. Caruso's recordings proposed at the Metropolitan let him earn fabulous engage in the following year. Caruso sings for 17 seasons at the Metropolitan, which owes him his fame, revolutionizing, from that prestigious stage, the way of singing opera. With his formidable skills as an interpreter, he introduces realism both in acting and in the expressiveness of singing, undermining virtuosity and impetuous traditional performance, and thus contributing to the transition from a bourgeois audience to mass culture. The works he interprets also produce the identification of the lyric with the Italian opera.

In New York he signs a contract with the record company Victor Talking Machine which makes him his testimonial to bring the work to the homes of the American bourgeoisie and to the world. Caruso is the first singer to sell a million records with his recording of Vesti la giubba dai Pagliacci. Between 1904 and 1920 he earned nearly two million dollars only from the sale of his records. He also recorded Neapolitan songs, starting from 1909, legitimizing the identification of Neapolitan popular music as an expression of Italianness, and creating a popular and cosmopolitan audience for his voice.

The American press follows the singer's career, his tours, but also his lifestyle with growing interest, creating the mythical figure of the singer for whom theaters are built in the Amazon and a fame that time does not scratch. Caruso appears frequently in the newspapers, in articles with often triumphal headlines, with photos that gradually become more casual and even joking, appears in the strips of Sunday comixes and publishes his tasty caricatures that are not at all amateurish, both in emigrant and American newspapers.

His personality also breaks through the distinction between the public and private spheres: newspapers tell about his family but also the scandals that see him involved (such as the "zoo scandal" and the escape of his partner Ada Giachetti with the driver).

Caruso is also a movie star, because he appears frequently in newsreels and in 1918 he plays two films with surprising actorial maturity, My Cousin and The Splendid Romance, the last one unfortunately lost. In My Cousin he plays both the successful tenor and his cousin who emigrated to Little Italy, confirming his adherence to the environment of Italian emigrants. "Italian abroad" Caruso frequents the artists of the immigrant theater in New York, such as Cesare Gravina (one of Eric von Stroheim's favorite actors) and William Ricciardi, the founder of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, who participate in the film in different ways.

Behind My Cousin there is a mystery because after a private preview (the day of the secret wedding with Dorothy, August 20, 1918) a different version of the film emerges, probably made under the singer pressure, irritated by the melodramatic stereotypes of the plot, particularly in the character of the immigrant cousin. Caruso plays the two characters with different tones, good-natured humor for the cousin and self-irony for the tenor. His acting is excellent, even praised in reviews, yet the film quickly disappears from circulation and his memory has been practically erased. The documentary tries to explain why.

During First World War, Caruso personally engaged in charitable activities, both in favor of Italian and American associations, with spectacular appearances in open-air concerts or at Madison Square Garden, documented by newsreels and press. He also composes Liberty Forever to support fundraising and records Over There, the well-known American patriotic song, perfecting the identity process of Italian abroad, recognizing the link with the land that welcomed him. In the finale of My Cousin the "tenor" visits his "cousin" in Little Italy, recognizing the kinship, the blood bond with the country of origin, but arrives on his expensive American car, which represents success (also material ) which he reached in New York, all between a waving of American and Italian flags.

Caruso therefore, bearer of a modern Neapolitan show culture, a great communicator and "an emigrant who has been successful", as he called himself, who conquers the Americas and becomes a myth.