MeterAiland, La Scala, February 17, 1901: Gaetano Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’amore” (love potion) is being staged. Obey the applause of the audience, otherwise the indomitable conductor Arturo Toscanini allows two tenors of his romantic song “Una furtiva lagrima”. After the performance, he immediately said enthusiastically: “Oh my God! If this Neapolitan continues to sing like this, the whole world will talk about him.”
A year later, on April 11, 1902, the singer stood in front of the funnel of the Grand Hotel Milano: Enrico Caruso. With his first ten records, the 100th anniversary of his death on August 2, he ensured the dignity of the phonograph as a musical instrument and ensured an epoch-making process of change in the perception of music. “He made the phonograph,” said Fred Geisberg, who discovered him for the record—and vice versa: The phonograph created him and made sure that a hundred years after his death, as Luciano Pavarotti admitted, he is still “a role model for all Italian tenors.”
