Word: caruso
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Surrender (Paramount) describes the adventures of a backwoods Cinderella (Wanda Hendrix) living in turn-of-the-century New England with a stern husband (Claude Rains) old enough to be her father. The pumpkin which gets her away from it all is a primitive talking-machine and a handful of Caruso recordings which she keeps hidden in a hillside cave for solitary recitals. Her prince charming is a rich city slicker (Macdonald Carey) who whisks her off to a nearby metropolis for an innocent, giddy evening of champagne and waltzes...
...full of memories. Enrico Caruso still seemed to him a "semi-god." He also bowed to Basso Chaliapin : "What a stage personality! I would never undertake Boris [Godunov] after Chaliapin." To Rothier, singers are different today, although since his retirement from the Met in 1939 he has tried to teach newcomers the old ways. "Nowadays," says he, "there are very few great voices because everybody is in such a hurry to become a star. They win a contest by singing one aria - and they are stars before they are ready...
...most memorable moment was one that few listeners were aware of. In the last act, with Mimi a-dying, Segurola (known mainly to a later generation as Deanna Durbin's teacher) suddenly turned to Caruso and whispered hoarsely that he could not manage his final aria, the "Coat Song." Grated the basso: "I've lost my voice...
...Madame Alda (now 66) recalls it, Caruso said, "Non fa niènte. You just stand still and move your lips and I'll sing it for you." With his back to the audience, he did just that. Says Alda: "I felt like sitting up in my bed and joining in the applause...
This week, on CBS's We the People program, U.S. music-lovers were to hear for the first time how the great tenor sounded as a great basso. For, pleased with his prank, Caruso had made a recording a few weeks later. Only six prints had been run off and Caruso had ordered the master copy destroyed. Said he: "I don't want to spoil the bass business." But one of the prints had been preserved by Dr. Mario Marafioti, onetime Met physician and friend of Caruso, and Narrator Wally (Voices That Live) Butterworth had persuaded...