Caruso was a very great man; let there be no mistake about that. And though he was not a great artist he was a great singer; let there be no mistake about that either. There has recently been a tendency to decry Caruso for his over-emphasis, his shouting, his almost ventriloquial ambitions, his coarseness, and his theatricality. No doubt, his singing possessed all these faults; but they were the faults of superfluous energy, of superfluous emotion, of superfluous vitality. They were inherent in his personality and therefore in his art. He should have pruned his style, the critics tell us. No doubt he should; but it is easier to prune a gooseberry bush in a backyard than a jungle in Guiana, and for my part I admire a major poet of the second class more than a minor poet of the first class. 

If you are anxious to test the measure of Caruso’s vitality, consider what he has meant to the gramophone. He made it what it is. For years in the minds of nearly everybody there were records, and these were Caruso records. He impressed his personality through the medium of his recorded voice on kings and peasants. Everybody might not possess a Caruso record, but everybody wanted to possess one, and a universal appeal such as his voice made cannot be sneered away by anybody. People did not really begin to buy gramophones until the appearance of the Caruso records.

We today with our ninth symphonies and our Mozart quartets owe our good fortune to Caruso. Fifteen years ago, when violin solos sounded like bluebottles on a window pane, overtures like badly played mouth-organs, chamber music like amorous cats, brass bands like runaway steam-rollers, and the piano like an old woman clicking her false teeth, Caruso’s voice proclaimed a millennium and preserved our faith. It was without a rival then, and writing these words as I am now in the Mediterranean air that first thrilled to his glorious voice I ask myself if it has any rival now.

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