A route in search of the places beloved of the great tenor
The Enrico Caruso trail in Tuscany
“I dream of going back to Tuscany, where the air is clear and where I hope to put down my roots for good”
Thus wrote the great Enrico Caruso at the end of a period of illness and convalescence, spent between New York and Naples, the city of his birth. As we can see from these few but powerful words, the tenor had a particular affection for Tuscany, for certain localities in particular, which you can visit by following this possible itinerary.
Livorno
Livorno was a city that Enrico Caruso loved and lived. Here, indeed, he performed at the Teatro Goldoni and stayed at the villa of soprano Ada Giachetti, his co-star in Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana. The performance was a resounding success, and he was recalled to Livorno the following year to star in Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci, this time at the Teatro Politeama. This was the background to which Caruso fell in love with Ada Giachetti, who became his partner for a good eleven years, and the woman who held first place in his heart.
The singer loved to take long walks along the Livorno waterfront, where he would meet colleagues such as Mascagni and Puccini.
Versilia: Viareggio and Torre del Lago
Sticking with the Tuscan coast, no list of Caruso’s favourite places can ignore Versilia. He met Puccini for the first time on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, and the two immediately developed a sincere friendship and mutual respect. They would go to eat together and talk walks around the landscapes of Torre del Lago and Viareggio (where he went to spend summer with his family). They say that when Puccini first heard Caruso sing he asked, incredulous, “But who sent you, God?”
Montecatini Terme
Caruso visited the city of Montecatini many times but, contrary to what we might expect, he was never engaged to sing there. He preferred to draw caricatures of the people he met around the spa resort of Tettuccio. Only once did he appear at the Teatro Olimpia, but then as a stand-in who saved the day (or evening). He was an unknown quantity with the public, but as soon as he opened his mouth to sing, he was applauded by the entire audience.
Florence and surroundings: Sesto Fiorentino and Lastra a Signa
In his career as tenor, Caruso spent a lot of time working in America, earning a fair fortune. This allowed him to invest huge sums of money in Tuscan property, the land that continued to call to him even across the ocean. In 1904 he bought the Villa I Pini on the via delle Panche, in the area of Sesto Fiorentino, where he had a large Italian-style garden built before moving there with his American wife Dorothy Benjamin.
But that was not his only investment in Florentine soil. He also bought a villa in Lastra a Signa, surrounded by fields and gardens and designed by the very architect who worked for the Medici family. The villa, which he named Bellosguardo, is today home to a Caruso Museum, which contains antiques, period photographs, personal effects and stage costumes donated by the centre of Caruso studies. It also has a collection of vinyl discs signed by Caruso, and an interactive exhibition where you can hear the tenor’s voice in person.
