The Reproduction of Caruso

Abstract

AbstractFew figures loom larger in the early history of recorded sound than Enrico Caruso. Man and voice are ubiquitous in the making of gramophone markets, and conspicuous, too, as means of scholarly explanation by which a sound medium was born. In sound studies, Caruso has become a cipher for ‘audile technique’ (Jonathan Sterne's coinage), the bodily practices by which listeners came to engage musical media as something for their ears alone. This article inquires after what made Caruso a reproducible person. It portrays him as a singer celebrity deeply involved in his own reproduction through the media of caricature, sculpture, film and opera house. Through analysis of Caruso's productions for New York's Italian diaspora and farther afield, it argues that an ensemble of media meant he was reproduced beyond familiar, cosmopolitan circuits of operatic celebrity. Finally, it shows how politics of celebrity reproduction were transformed following Caruso's death, through the writing of history, into new imaginations and techniques for listening.