Vocal recall
Roberto Alagna on Caruso’s voice
Caruso has always been with me. When I started learning to sing, my teacher and I had a Sunday afternoon ritual in which we’d spend hours listening to Caruso, analysing every note and phrase. He really is the symbol of the modern tenor. The colour of his voice was very special – he used the low of the bel canto range, as well as something more masculine. His phrasing had real spontaneity with a cello-like tone.
In my album Caruso 1873, I tried to interpret the phrases in a similar way, studying the breath and opening the sound like he does. His style was to place the voice at the front of the mouth and open it from there, which is a very different technique to what we use today, where we tend to open the throat.
Caruso’s tempos were faster than we are used to, because they had a very short time to record everything with the wax cylinders they used. He sang with a beautiful tone and very little effect in the voice, never pushing it. The recorded sound is simple and dry, with no reverberation and without helping the voice. In 2000, an updated recording put a modern orchestra with Caruso’s voice, but with all the sensitive microphones it just wasn’t as good. Some of the magic was lost. With the sound quality of the time on the wax cylinders, his voice became magical. ‘Caruso 1873’ is out on Sony Classical