Beschreibung:

CARUSO, Enrico (1873-1921) Caruso’s personal archive of correspondence and financial papers, 1897-1908, 1912-1921. The archive comprises approximately 282 autograph letters signed and telegrams by Caruso and approximately 423 letters and telegrams addressed to him, the great majority in Italian, a few in English, French or Spanish, including: approximately 214 autograph letters signed and one telegram by Caruso to Ada Giachetti, 1 October 1897 - 11 April 1908, with 120 replies; 20 autograph letters signed and 18 telegrams to her sister, Rina, 1913-1917, with 135 letters and 21 telegrams in reply; six letters by Caruso to his son Rodolfo, and 24 to other recipients; the letters addressed to Caruso (a few to Ada, Rina or others) by his wife Dorothy Benjamin (2, n.d. [c. 1918-1920], including one about him asking her father for permission to marry her, ‘Did you do as you told me you would, and speak to Father? I feel sure you did and it makes me so happy. I love you so much, Rico dear’), by his sons Rodolfo and Enrico jr (23 and one telegram), by two inamoratas, Vina Velasquez (22 letters and postcards and 7 telegrams, mostly in Spanish, with a number of photographs, 1912: ‘Mon bien aimé, mi tesoro, son las 11 de la noche y no puedo dormir …’) and Luisa Starace (7 letters and 2 telegrams, also 1912), also a brief correspondence in the same year from a young child, Georgette Cohan (4 letters and a postcard addressed to Caruso as 'Dear Papa', 1912), and two letters and a telegram relating to the settlement of his breach of promise suit with Mildred Meffert (1914), and letters from various other family members, professional advisors and others; together with a quantity of financial papers, comprising approximately 185 bills, receipts, personal accounts, payment slips, pay-books, bank statements, banking correspondence (including about money wired in 1920 to Ada Giachetti), insurance documents, and c.344 signed cheques, 1906-1921, with a few other related documents and printed ephemera, the whole contained in approximately 20 clip files. The untold story of Enrico Caruso An unknown and unpublished archive of Caruso's rise from provincial obscurity to world fame, revealing for the first time in its full complexity the story of his relationship with the two Giachetti sisters, Ada and Rina. The present archive was inaccessible even to Enrico Caruso Jr in writing his biography of his father (Enrico Caruso My Father and My Family. Amadeus Press, Portland, 1990). At the heart of the archive are Caruso’s love letters to Ada Giachetti, a passionate and in places anguished correspondence which also provides a remarkable degree of insight into Caruso's life and career, including on occasion aria-by-aria accounts of key performances. The 25-year old daughter of a civil servant, Ada Giachetti was already well established as a dramatic soprano in the regional opera houses of Italy when she and Caruso met during the summer opera season at the Teatro Goldoni in Livorno, where they sang together for the first time on 7 July 1897, as Violetta and Alfredo in La Traviata. Caruso was less well known at this point, some two years after his stage debut, and was still struggling to overcome the difficulties at the top of his vocal range which had blighted his early career. Although Ada was married, to Gino Botti, with a two-year old son, Lelio, the two began an enduring relationship that summer: Giachetti left her husband shortly before the birth of a son, Rodolfo Caruso, on 2 July 1898, and suspended her career as a singer in 1900; a second son, Enrico jr, was born on 7 September 1904. The relationship was to come to a shattering halt in the summer of 1908, when, notoriously, Ada left Caruso for the family's chauffeur, Cesare Romati. The correspondence in the very early stages of their relationship is especially rich both on an emotional and a technical level: in particular, a series of letters written in October-November 1897 whilst preparing for his c