Enrico Caruso

Enrico Caruso was born in Naples on 25 February 1873, an Italian tenor who would sing at every major opera house on two continents. His range ran from lyric to dramatic roles, and audiences packed theaters in Europe and the Americas to hear him. But the stage was only half the story: between 1902 and 1920, he made around 250 commercial recordings, capturing a voice that had once vanished with the final curtain and turning it into something people could own, replay, carry home. He became the first international recording star - proof that technology could make a single performer inescapable. He died on 2 August 1921, but the records outlasted him.