TWO NOVEMBER GROUNDBREAKING DEBUTS
By Matthew Grieco
Italians, and Italian-Americans, are justly renowned for their contributions to the arts. Two highly influential debuts of Italians occurred in November in the United States.
On November 23, 1903, Enrico Caruso sang his first performance at the Metropolitan Opera – Verdi’s Rigoletto. Caruso was born in Naples in 1873 and baptized Errico, the Neapolitan version of Enrico. His father thought singing was an unremunerative occupation and trained him as a mechanic. Nevertheless, the young Caruso had some voice training and earned modest fees as a church singer, supplemented by tips for performing in cafes. At the age of 18, he was able to interest Maestro Guglielmo Vergine in taking him on as a voice student. Caruso was unable to afford the lessons, and signed a contract, promising Vergine 25% of his earnings for “five years of actual singing.” After Caruso’s career took off, Vergine decided to milk his cash cow, and interpreted the contractual five-year period as consisting of only performance time, which would thus last Caruso’s entire life. However, Caruso prevailed in the courts.
Caruso sang at various opera houses around the world, but he became a true international star following his New York Metropolitan debut in 1903, his first of 607 performances there. The following year, he began recording with the Victor Talking Machine Company, thereby reaching millions of listeners. His voice thus enshrined, Caruso’s reign as the King of Tenors continues to this day.
The world of cinematography was forever changed on November 20, 1921, with the release of The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino. He was born with the unwieldy name of Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguola in the town of Castellaneta, near Taranto, in 1895, the same year the motion picture camera was invented. When he was 18 years old, he immigrated to New York and eked out a meager living as a dancer. His first movie appearances were as a dancer, and later he was cast as a villain; however, his matinee idol good looks destined him to become the paradigm leading man. Crowds flocked to see him in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Blood and Sand, The Young Rajah, Cobra, The Eagle, and others. The Son of the Sheik, the sequel to Valentino’s most beloved film, was also his last. Shortly after that premiere, at the age of only 31, Valentino died from a post-operative infection. Among his pallbearers were the other stars of the cinema, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.