Posted in: Recording by Joanna Yossarian on January 21st, 2009 | 3 Comments
Enrico Caruso was the first singer to record his voice on a gramophone disc. Caruso’s fame was guaranteed as one of the first recording stars. The gramophone also needed less adjustment and could carry a recording on both sides of the disc.
Be the first
Enrico Caruso was the first singer to record his voice on a gramophone disc and he did it in 1902 in a studio belonging to the Gramophone and Typewriter Company in New York. His recording of “Vesti la Gubbia” in 1907 became the world’s first million-selling record and ensured the supremacy of the gramophone record over other competing technologies for recorded music.
Puccini
Caruso, born in Naples in 1875, was the outstanding tenor of his time and for seventeen years was the principal tenor of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. While rehearsing the part of Rodolpho in La Boheme, he visited the composer Giacomo Puccini to ask for his comments on his interpretation. Caruso sang a few bars and the composer asked: “Who sent you to me? The Almighty?”
Gramophone disc
Caruso’s fame was guaranteed as one of the first recording stars. Since Edison’s original recording of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a wax cylinder in 1877, various alternative technologies had been developed. Emile Berliner developed a system of recording onto a gramophone disc, which had many advantages over the cylinder and the phonograph. Although the recording quality was no better, it was easier to make multiple copies through molding and pressing. The gramophone also needed less adjustment and could carry a recording on both sides of the disc. All of Caruso’s 450 recordings were made for it, and it became the most desirable and popular domestic entertainment system in the first half of the century.
Caruso’s recordings, low fidelity by today’s standards, give only a partial impression of the power, range, and delicacy of the great man’s voice.
Christy Tuller January 21st, 2009 at 11:38 am
Very interesting piece of history! Thanks for sharing.
Michael Quinn July 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Riddled with blatant errors of fact. The piece should have been better researched. Caruso was not the first singer to make a gramophone disc. Many singers preceded him. His first 1902 discs were made in the Continental Hotel, Milan not in New York. Caruso’s first New York recordings were not until 1904 for Victor.
Edison first cylinder recording in 1877 was not on wax but on tin-foil. Edison’s earliest wax cylinder recordings were cut in 1888.
Edison cylinders by the early 1900s certainly were made using moulds but discs were pressed from a metal stamper.
All of Caruso’s discs were single face until the 1920s.
Michael Quinn
HM May 19th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
Error.
Caruso no fue el primer cantante en registrar la voz en discos.
Pues con anterioridad, y obviando otras grabaciones realizadas a cantantes en Europa (entre ellas en España en 1899), tenemos las grabaciones que, por poner un ejemplo, fueron obtenidas en Roma, entre otros, a Alessandro Moreschi.
Podiamos continuar pormenorizando este tema, pero considero, por cuestión de espacio, este sería bastante amplio.
Espero que el comentario haya servido.