Eyewitness 1920: Ill Caruso still thrills
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Enrico Caruso: A charmer
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Enrico Caruso had a cold.
His illness, however, did not stop him from singing in a long-anticipated recital at the Syria Mosque on Feb. 28, 1920. It also did not stop him from charming the audience that filled the Oakland landmark on that winter night.
"It was not the ordinary hand clapping, but waves on waves of acclaim that echoed through the halls of the building," The Pittsburgh Press reported in the next day's front-page story.
First noting that Caruso had a bad cold, the writer tiptoed around any description of the quality of his performance. The review instead emphasized the enthusiastic audience response, not only to Caruso but to the other musicians on the program. They were soprano Nina Morgana and violinist Elias Breeskin. Breeskin later became concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Glendinning Keeble, the reviewer for the Gazette-Times, was less charitable.
Caruso's singing, he wrote, "at its best comes perilously close to perfection." Then he lowered the boom. "That danger was avoided last night, for it was obvious that, vocally, he was in some distress."
Keeble observed that Caruso was his own worst critic. "[H]is frankness in acknowledging all shortcomings was altogether disarming," he wrote. "He would answer the applause with shakes of his head and other deprecatory gestures, which showed that, at any rate, he was trying to give his best."
"And from time to time there were phrases of ringing brilliance, or of long drawn sweetness, such as no other man alive can give."
Keeble was a friend of novelist Willa Cather, who in an earlier career had been a newspaper reporter and reviewer in Pittsburgh. She once wrote that Keeble was the best music critic she knew.
First Published November 28, 2010 12:00 am
