Caruso Goes

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 170572, 4 August 1921, Page 7

Caruso Goes

The world’s greatest tenor has sung” his last song. Three_ or four months ago, ay Idle singing in NeAV York, Caruso burst a bloodvessel ; and although it was recognised then that his concert career, had possibly closed, no one suspected that he was in greater danger still. But uoav he lies uead in his native city of Naples. Born in 1873, he, passes into the shadows long b,efore his powers, in the ordinary course of nature, Avould haA’e shown serious signs of deterioration.. And thanks to Edison and the inventor’s imitators, he Avill be mourned by a larger host of admirers than ever before sighed for “the sound of a voice that is still.” It is true of course that lliis is the age of extravagant and maudlin eulogy. We discover a genius every evening at supper, and unearth another Avliile Avaiting for the eggs to boil next morning. Marvels especially aesthetic marvels were never so plentiful or so cheap. But if we avoid gushing extravagances on the one hand and a hyper-criti-cal superciliousness on the other we shall call Caruso a genius, and his death the extinguishing of the vocal heaven’s brightest star. Though we cannot remember that he ever crossed the Equator his face has been as familiar to those “down under” as the Southern Cross itself, while the sound of his voice has been the most thrilling thing after Melba’s. But in the Northern Hemisphere he has been seen and heard in every important city on the two sides of the Atlantic—in Petrograd, 'Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, Paris, London, the leading cities of Germany, the greatest cities of the States of America. In Italy especially he was a national figure —their super-man singer as Mascagni is their superman composer; and it must be remembered that the makers of opera, and the rare interpreters of them, are as important in Italy as the makers of war and the builders of nations.

Then, in spite of the eo-st, to how many of ns here at the end of the earth would life not be poorer if Caruso had never been born to sing-. We have had to extract him. mechanically from porcelain and wax, but even thus he has meant more to some of us than we could readily estimate. He has given us first the joy of .dramatic emotion. ' For many he has brought the first real notion of the power of tempestuous song. He has opened for us the minds of many famous composers; and always and everywhere he has been an influence working for brotherhood. For the very first fact about music is that however national it is it is also international. The “Eid King'’ knows neither country nor time, "‘'Adelaida” neither blood-bond nor race.