Editing Enrico Caruso (section)

==Recordings==
{{Main|Enrico Caruso discography}}
{{See also|Enrico Caruso compact disc discography}}

[[File:Caruso gramophone cartoon.jpg|thumb|Self-caricature of Caruso making a record]]

Enrico Caruso died in 1921, before the advent of electrical recording technology in 1925. His entire recorded output was made using the [[Acoustic recording|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]].
This antiquated process captured a limited range of the overtones and nuances present in a singing voice.
Caruso's 12 inch disc records were limited to a maximum playing time of approximately four and one half minutes; consequently, most of the operatic selections that he recorded were limited to that duration or those which could be edited to fit this time constraint. Occasionally, longer excerpts were issued on two or more record sides.

Caruso is generally acknowledged as the record industry's first major recording star. He possessed a [[phonogenic]] voice which was "manly and powerful, yet sweet and lyrical", to quote the singer/author John Potter (see bibliography below). Caruso and the disc [[phonograph]] (known in the United Kingdom as the [[wikt:gramophone|gramophone]]) did much to promote each other during the first two decades of the 20th century. From 1902 to 1921, Caruso earned over two million dollars in royalties from the sale of his records. Many of Caruso's recordings have remained continuously available since their original issue over a century ago. All of his surviving recordings (including several unissued takes) have been [[remaster]]ed and reissued several times over the years. Although some recordings of complete operas had been undertaken during the early 1900s, Caruso never participated in a complete opera recording. He did, however, take part in a series of recordings for [[Victor Talking Machine Company|Victor]] of excerpts from [[Charles Gounod|Gounod's]] ''[[Faust (opera)|Faust]]'' with a unified cast featuring [[Geraldine Farrar]], [[Marcel Journet]], [[Antonio Scotti]] and [[Louise Homer]].<ref name=Marston>{{cite web
|title=Carmen. The first complete recording. Liner Notes by Harold Bruder
|url=http://www.marstonrecords.com/carmen2/carmen2_liner.htm
|publisher=Marston Records
|access-date=29 July 2013|url-status=dead
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130730203802/http://www.marstonrecords.com/carmen2/carmen2_liner.htm
|archive-date=30 July 2013
}}</ref>

Caruso's first recordings were arranged by recording pioneer [[Fred Gaisberg]] and cut on disc in three separate sessions in Milan during April, November and December 1902. They were made with piano accompaniments for the [[Gramophone Company|Gramophone & Typewriter Company Limited]], precursor to [[His Master's Voice (British record label)|His Master's Voice]]. In April 1903, he made seven further recordings, also in Milan, for the Anglo-Italian Commerce Company (AICC). These were originally released on discs bearing the [[Zonophone]] label. Three more Milan recordings for AICC followed in October 1903, released by [[Pathé Records]] on cylinders as well as on discs. Caruso made one final recording for the Gramophone & Typewriter Ltd in April 1904. On 1 February 1904, Caruso made his first recordings in the United States for the [[Victor Talking Machine Company]] and thereafter recorded exclusively for Victor. Caruso's American recordings were all made in Victor's studios in New York and its headquarters 
in [[Camden, New Jersey]]. Some of his later recordings were made in Victor's Trinity Church studio, which Victor acquired in 1917 for its acoustical properties and could accommodate larger bands of musicians. Caruso's first recordings for Victor in 1904 were made in Room 826, a small vocal studio located in [[Carnegie Hall]] in New York. "[[Questa o quella]]" and "[[La donna è mobile]]" from Verdi's ''Rigoletto'' were the first selections to be recorded. 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]]''.

Caruso's earliest Victor records of operatic arias from 1904 and 1905, like their thirty or so Milan-made predecessors, were all piano accompanied. From February 1906, however, orchestral accompaniments became the norm, utilizing an ensemble of between eleven and twenty musicians. The regular conductors of these recording sessions with the Victor Orchestra were [[Walter B. Rogers]] and, from 1916, [[Josef Pasternack]]. Beginning in 1932, [[RCA Victor]] in the USA and [[EMI]] ([[His Master's Voice (British record label)|His Master's Voice]]) in the UK, reissued several of the Caruso discs with the original accompaniment over-dubbed by a larger electrically recorded orchestra.<ref>{{cite web |title=Voice Grafting 1932 |website=British Pathé |url=https://www.britishpathe.com/video/voice-grafting/ |access-date=10 May 2019}} (Newsreel film of the overdubbing process being carried out at [[His Master's Voice (British record label)|His Master's Voice]] studios in London.)</ref> Earlier experiments using this re-dubbing technique, carried out by Victor in 1927, had been considered unsatisfactory. Although these overdubbed Caruso recordings were initially praised by many critics upon their original release in the 1930s, they are largely vilified by collectors today. In 1950, RCA Victor reissued a number of the tenor's recordings on 78-rpm discs pressed on red [[vinylite]] instead of the usual [[shellac]]. 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. RCA Victor issued its first Caruso collections on LP in 1951; most of these early LP compilations were also simultaneously released on RCA Victor's new 45-rpm format. In 1956, RCA Victor issued a limited edition 3 LP Caruso anthology in a deluxe album with an illustrated booklet. By 1959, RCA Victor had reissued more than half of their Caruso catalog on LP records. A few more collections of Caruso recordings previously unavailable on LP were released by RCA Victor during the 1960s. In 1973, to mark the centennial year of Caruso's birth, the label issued a 4 record boxed set containing the tenor's remaining 59 recordings not previously transferred to LP, which included some unpublished items. In Italy that year, [[RCA Italiana]] released a comprehensive 12 LP boxed set containing most of Caruso's Victor recordings. 

[[File:Enrico Caruso in "Samson et Dalila". Photograph by Herman Mishkin.jpg|thumb|upright|Caruso as Samson in ''[[Samson et Dalila]]'', 1919]]

During the 1970s, [[Thomas Stockham|Thomas G. Stockham]] of the [[University of Utah]] developed an early computer reprocessing technique called "[[Soundstream]]" to remaster Caruso's recordings for RCA. This digital recording process claimed to remove or reduce some of the undesirable resonances and distortion and to reduce [[surface noise]] typical of the early acoustically recorded shellac discs (critics of Stockham's process later claimed that the recordings were merely "re-equalized" by increasing bass and reducing treble). From 1978 to 1985, RCA issued ''The Complete Caruso'' series on LP and cassette, utilizing these early digitised recordings (after the advent of the [[compact disc]] in the early 1980s, RCA never finished ''The Complete Caruso'' series on LP and the pre-1906 European and early Victor recordings were never remastered using the Soundstream process). RCA released its first Caruso compact disc, a collection of 21 operatic arias, in 1987. Finally in 1990, RCA Victor issued a 12 CD boxed set of Caruso's complete recordings (the recordings were repackaged and reissued by RCA again in 2004 and (minus the pre-Victor recordings) for a third time, in 2017). Other complete sets of Caruso's recordings in new remasterings were issued on CD on the Pearl label and in 2000–2004 by [[Naxos (record label)|Naxos]]. The Pearl and Naxos sets were remastered by the noted American audio-restoration engineer [[Ward Marston]]. In 1993, Pearl also released a two-CD collection devoted to RCA and EMI's electrically over-dubbed versions of some of Caruso's original acoustic discs, originally issued in the 1930s. Since 1999, RCA Victor has issued three CDs of Caruso recordings with digitally recorded over-dubbed orchestral accompaniments. Since the expiration of their original copyrights, Caruso's records are now in the [[public domain]] in the United States and have been reissued by several different record labels with varying degrees of sound quality. They are also available over the internet as digital downloads. Caruso's best-selling downloads at [[iTunes]] have been the popular Italian folk songs "[[Santa Lucia (song)|Santa Lucia]]" and "{{lang|nap|[['O sole mio]]|italic=no}}".{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}

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]].{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}