Enrico Caruso

as Dick Johnson in "la Fanciulla del West" by Puccini CREATOR New York Met 10/12/1910
ENRICO CARUSO
( February 25, 1873 – August 2, 1921)
Italian Tenor
Stage debut March 15, 1895 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. L'Amico Francesco, by the amateur composer Domenico Morelli. He received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi .Caruso's 25-year career, stretching from 1895 to 1920, included 863 appearances at the New York Metropolitan Opera sang at such venues as La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he was also the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 18 consecutive seasons. It was at the Met, in 1910, that he created the role of Dick Johnson in Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West.

Caruso's voice extended up to high C in its prime and grew in power and weight as he grew older. He sang a broad spectrum of roles, ranging from lyric, to spinto, to dramatic parts, in the Italian and French repertoires. In the German repertoire, Caruso sang only two roles, Assad (in Karl Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba) and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, both of which he performed in Italian in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 1901, respectively