Sold Date: March 27, 2022
Start Date: March 27, 2020
Final Price: £14.00 (GBP)
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AN EXCELLENT PLAYING COPY OF THIS CLASSIC 10" 78 FROM THE FIRST MILLION SELLING ARTIST  ENRICO CARUSO

O SOLE MIO

b/w A VUCCHELLA  

Enrico Caruso (Naples, February 25, 1873 – Naples, August 2, 1921) was an Italian tenor who sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and North and South America.

Such was Enrico Caruso's influence on singing style, almost all subsequent tenors in the Italian repertoire have been his heirs to a greater or lesser extent.

His operatic career spanned the years 1895 to 1920 but was cut short by a serious illness which eventually killed him at the age of 48. He remains famous, while few other early 20th-century singing idols are still remembered by the general public. In the 21st century, many people might think of this as a remarkable achievement in itself because unlike modern-day singers, he did not have access to a sophisticated marketing and communications industry with the capacity to publicise his attainments instantly and globally via the media. (He did, however, become a client of Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, during the latter's tenure as a press agent in the United States.)

Biographers generally attribute Caruso's worldwide success (in addition to the unique quality of his voice) to his sharp business sense, and to his enthusiastic use of cutting-edge technology for its time—commercial sound recording. Many prominent opera singers belonging to an earlier generation than Caruso's had rejected the phonograph (or gramophone) due to various factors such as the low fidelity of early discs, and their voices have been lost to us as a result. But other veteran opera singers of the first magnitude, including Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno and Nellie Melba, decided to embrace the new technology once they saw the quick financial returns that Caruso was reaping from his recording sessions.

Caruso made more than 260 extant recordings in America for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) over a 16-year period, and he would earn millions of dollars in royalties from the retail sales of the resulting 78-rpm discs. These Victor discs, recorded from 1904 to 1920, chart the development of Caruso's voice from that of a good-sized lyric tenor, to that of a spinto tenor, to that of a fully-fledged dramatic tenor with a potent, almost baritonal timbre. (Previously, in Italy in 1902-1903, he had cut a few batches of records for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company, Zonophone and Pathé Records.)

There is a visual record of Caruso, too. He appeared in a number of newsreels, a short experimental film made by Thomas Edison, and two commercial motion pictures. For Edison in 1911, he portrayed the role of Edgardo in a filmed scene from Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1919, he acted in a dual role in the American silent movie My [Italian] Cousin for Paramount Pictures. This movie included a sequence showing him on stage singing the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The following year Caruso appeared as a character called Cosimo in another movie, The Splendid Romance. Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 to appear in these two romantic comedies but they both flopped at the box office.

While Caruso sang at most of the world's foremost opera theatres, including La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he is best known for being the leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 18 consecutive seasons. His total Met appearances exceeded 800.

Caruso's voice extended up to the high C in its prime. Both his virile vocal technique and unaffected style of singing were without precedent. They combined the best aspects of the old 19th-century tradition of elegant bel canto vocalism with the ardent delivery, naturalistic phrasing and big, exciting tenor sound demanded by such 20th century composers of verismo opera as Puccini, Leoncavallo, Mascagni and Giordano. Fellow singers found him to be an attentive colleague, and he was able to invest his operatic interpretations with an exceptional degree of emotional force and tonal beauty without becoming lachrymose or 'hammy'. Judging by contemporary reviews of his Met performances he was a keen and sincere actor, too, if not always a subtle one.

"'O sole mio" is a globally known Neapolitan song written in 1898. It has been performed and covered by many artists, including such stalwarts of opera as Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, Mario Lanza, The Three Tenors, as well as rock/pop artists such as Bryan Adams, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Vitas (who sings it in a high countertenor range) and Elvis Presley(It's now or never).  Luciano Pavarotti won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance for his rendition of 'O Sole Mio. The lyrics were written by Giovanni Capurro, and the melody was composed by Eduardo di Capua. Though there are versions in other languages, 'O sole mio is usually sung in the original Neapolitan language. 'O sole mio is the Neapolitan equivalent of Standard Italian Il sole mio and translates literally as "My Sun"

In the UK, Walls used the tune to advertise their "Cornetto" ice cream range

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POSTAGE STUFF

10" 78 RPM RECORDS NEED CAREFULLY PACKING, AND I CLAIM TO HAVE THE BEST PACKAGING IN THE WORLD FOR DISPATCHING THEM! 

THE GREG'S GREAT'S SYSTEM CONSISTS OF A SPECIALLY DESIGNED INNER BOX MADE OUT OF 1" THICK POLYSTYRENE, WHICH THEN GOES INSIDE A DOUBLE CORRUGATED STIFF OUTER CARDBOARD CARTON. THE BOXES CAN TAKE UP TO 21 RECORDS,

I SEND OUT ON AVERAGE ABOUT 30 PARCELS A WEEK AND DISPATCH IS NORMALLY DONE ONCE A WEEK