Trivia

Was an excellent caricaturist who took great pride in his sketches.

He is usually considered the greatest operatic tenor ever, and he was the first opera star to make best-selling recordings, beginning around 1903, which are still in print to this day. His signature role was Canio, the traveling clown in Ruggero Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci". He starred in many of the great Italian operas--some in their US premieres--at the old Metropolitan Opera House, many times under the conductorship of the legendary Arturo Toscanini. He appeared with some of the most famous operatic sopranos who ever lived, and was the first tenor whose name became familiar to people who seldom listened to opera.

Pictured on a 22¢ US commemorative postage stamp in the Performing Arts series, issued 27 February 1987 (104th anniversary of his birth).

As a youth in his native Naples, he fell in love with a local girl whom he wanted to marry. The girls' father deemed him too low class to marry his daughter, stating that Caruso would never amount to anything as an opera singer. Just a few years later, he became the most famous singer in the world, making him a wealthy man.

He was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6625 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

Caruso was in San Francisco on April 18, 1906, the day of the city's worst earthquake. He vowed never to return to that city, and never did.

Father of Rodolfo Caruso and singer/actor Enrico Caruso Jr., by an earlier relationship with soprano Ada Giachetti, and Gloria Caruso Murray by his marriage to Dorothy Benjamin Caruso.

Was frequently cast opposite singer/actress Geraldine Farrar at the Metropolitan. Between the two of them, they were the biggest box-office combination the company had during the first two decades of the 20th century.

Was the Metropolitan Opera's greatest superstar between his debut with the company in November 1903 (Duke of Mantua in Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto"), and his last performance with them on Christmas Eve 1920 (Eleazar in Halevy's "La Juive"). During those years, he appeared on every Met opening night except one, in 1906, when personal circumstances forced him to cancel.

Arguably the first real superstar of recordings, Caruso was the man who truly put the recording industry in America on the map, and who helped establish the Victor label (later RCA Victor) as a power within that industry. His many recordings, some with modern orchestral accompaniment dubbed in, have remained in print and continue to sell well to this day, almost 100 years after the first of them were recorded.

Resided at the Ansonia Hotel, 2109 Broadway, in Manhattan, New York.