Initially, Marcellino thought his son should adopt the same trade, and at the age of 11, the boy was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer who constructed and maintained public water fountains.

On 15 March 1895 at the age of 22, Caruso made his professional stage debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in the now-forgotten opera, L'Amico Francesco, by the amateur composer Mario Morelli.

A string of further engagements in provincial opera houses followed, and he received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi that improved his high notes and polished his style.

The first major operatic role that Caruso created was Federico in Francesco Cilea's L'arlesiana (1897); then he was Loris in Umberto Giordano's Fedora (1898) at the Teatro Lirico, Milan.

Puccini considered casting the young Caruso in the role of Cavaradossi in Tosca at its premiere in January 1900, but ultimately chose the older, more established Emilio De Marchi instead.

In December 1901, Caruso made his debut at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples in L'Elisir d'Amore to a lukewarm reception; two weeks later he appeared as Des Grieux in Massenet's Manon which was even more coolly received.

Caruso embarked on his last series of La Scala performances in March 1902, creating the principal tenor part of Federico Loewe in Germania by Alberto Franchetti.

A month later, on 11 April, he was engaged by the British Gramophone Company to make his first group of recordings in a Milan hotel room for a fee of 100 pounds sterling.

In addition to his regular New York engagements, Caruso gave recitals and operatic performances in a large number of cities across the United States and sang in Canada.

Following an appearance as Don José in Carmen at the city's Grand Opera House, a strong jolt awakened Caruso at 5:13 on the morning of the 18th in his suite at the Palace Hotel.

[citation needed] Initially, the leaders of New York's opera-going high society were outraged by the incident, which received extensive newspaper coverage, but it was soon forgotten and Caruso's popularity was unaffected.

[23][24] The timbre of Caruso's voice gradually darkened as he aged and by 1916, he began adding heroic tenor parts such as Samson, John of Leyden, and Eléazar to his repertoire.

Caruso did extensive charity work during the conflict, raising money for many war-related patriotic causes by giving concerts and participating enthusiastically in Liberty Bond drives.

Dorothy Caruso noted that her husband's health began to rapidly decline after he returned from a lengthy North American concert tour in the autumn of 1920.

A scenery malfunction during a performance of Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah at the Met on December 3rd caused a decorative pillar to fall and hit him on the back, over the left kidney (and not on the chest as popularly reported).

Caruso's physician, Philip Horowitz, who usually treated him for migraine headaches with a kind of primitive TENS unit, diagnosed "intercostal neuralgia" and pronounced him fit to appear on stage, although the pain continued to hinder his voice production and movements.

Following this incident, a clearly unwell Caruso gave only three more performances at the Met, the final one being as Eléazar in Halévy's La Juive on 24 December 1920, while suffering acute pain.

[42][43] The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, opened the Royal Basilica of the Church of San Francesco di Paola for Caruso's funeral, which was attended by thousands of people.

Others, including Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno and Nellie Melba, exploited the new technology once they became aware of the financial returns that Caruso was reaping from his initial recording sessions.

Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 (US$2.03 million in 2023[19]) each to appear in these two efforts but My Cousin flopped at the box office, and The Splendid Romance was apparently never released.

In the German repertoire, Caruso sang only two roles, Assad in Karl Goldmark's The Queen of Sheba and Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, both of which he performed in Italian in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 1901, respectively.

[51] During his lifetime, Caruso received many orders, decorations, testimonials and other kinds of honours from monarchs, governments and miscellaneous cultural bodies of the various nations in which he sang.

They ranged from classical compositions to traditional Italian melodies and popular tunes of the day, including a few English-language titles such as George M. Cohan's "Over There", Henry Geehl's "For You Alone" and Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord".

His entire recorded output was made using the acoustic process, which required the performer to sing into a metal horn or funnel; the sound was relayed directly onto a wax master disc, using a stylus.

He did, however, take part in a series of recordings for Victor of excerpts from Gounod's Faust with a unified cast featuring Geraldine Farrar, Marcel Journet, Antonio Scotti and Louise Homer.

Caruso's final recording session took place at Victor's Trinity Church studio in Camden on 16 September 1920, with the tenor singing the "Domine Deus" and "Crucifixus" from Rossini's Petite messe solennelle.

Beginning in 1932, RCA Victor in the USA and EMI (HMV) in the UK, reissued several of the Caruso discs with the original accompaniment over-dubbed by a larger electrically recorded orchestra.

As long-playing discs (LPs) became popular, many of Caruso's recordings were electronically enhanced with reverb and similar effects to make them sound "fuller" for release on the extended format.

During the 1970s, Thomas G. Stockham of the University of Utah developed an early computer reprocessing technique called "Soundstream" to remaster Caruso's recordings for RCA.

[citation needed] In addition to operatic arias, Caruso recorded many duets and ensembles with several noted opera stars of the period, including Nellie Melba, Geraldine Farrar, Johanna Gadski, Frances Alda, Emmy Destinn, Marcella Sembrich, Alma Gluck, Luisa Tetrazzini, Frieda Hempel, Amelita Galli-Curci, Louise Homer, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Antonio Scotti, Mario Ancona, Pasquale Amato, Titta Ruffo, Giuseppe De Luca and Marcel Journet.