The Great Caruso

The Great Caruso is an American feature film from 1951, which describes the life of tenor Enrico Caruso.

Action

The film begins in childhood Caruso when he sings in a children's choir in Naples. The elder Caruso sings in a bar for pennies and falls in love Musette Barretto, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The poor Caruso begins in the company of Barretto to work to make himself popular. By chance he met the singer of the San Carlo Theatre, interested in his voice. He takes a commitment to this theater and begins to sing in the choir. Then it goes steeply uphill with him. He takes over first leading roles as a soloist and finally sings La Scala in Milan. Finally Over the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, he comes to sing with the aim at New York's Metropolitan Opera in the U.S.. Right at the beginning of his stay there will be an embarrassing situation when his soprano Louise Heggar is presented. It refers to the man at her side as her father, but in fact he is her husband Benjamin Park and one of the main sponsors of the MET. Offended henceforth tried this anything to sell Caruso from the MET. Caruso should apologize to him and goes to him, but he falls in love with his daughter Dorothy. His debut flopped due to the influenced of Benjamin critics. Benjamin tries to persuade the MET Director to dismiss Caruso. This hears of it and can anticipate his release with his termination. When Dorothy learns of this, she persuades him to go on. The next premiere will be a huge success and Caruso is no longer to terminate. He then goes on a major world tour and when he comes back, he wants to marry Dorothy. Her father is still, however, and when they get married yet, he breaks with the daughter. The two are happy and nothing seems to be able to separate them. But Caruso is now a sick man. When he collapses during a performance in the presence of Dorothy, he died soon afterwards at the age of only 47 years.

Background

With The Great Caruso the Italian-American tenor Mario Lanza had arrived at the summit of his career. 1949 had given his film debut and immediately landed a huge success of the already famous opera star. His films were not of significant artistic quality, but Lanza was it the most popular singer in the United States. However, the success with The Great Caruso seemed to him to go to his head. Too much he compared himself already with the legend Caruso and his film work has been hampered by his divenhaftiges behavior. This makes it even lost roles as the lead role in The Student Prince, where he would have played again on the side of Ann Blyth. His role took over Edmund Purdom.

The Caruso film is only very vaguely inspired by the biography of Enrico Caruso. He preferred to invent a love story to show as the true Caruso, who was already married in Italy, and when he married Dorothy Benjamin, was the widespread opinion that this was rather been a money marriage. The focus of the film, however, is the music and the singing of Mario Lanza. He sings excerpts from Rigoletto and Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini, Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti Friedrich von Flotow or Martha. Besides Lanza impressed especially the soprano Dorothy Kirsten with duets and arias. Especially at the end of the film her stirred Ave Maria by Bach / Gounod to tears.

Reviews

" A mixture of history and entertainment elements in compliant frame. For lovers of Italian opera music a pleasure. "

Awards

Douglas Shearer, Sound engineer of MGM, was awarded the Oscar for Best Sound at the Academy Awards in 1952. In addition, the costumes and the music were nominated for an Oscar.

1951 in film Richard Thorpe Screenplay Sonya Levien William Ludwig Joe Pasternak Film score Johnny Green Joseph Ruttenberg Hail Mary 24th Academy Awards
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