The (Many) Loves of Enrico Caruso

Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo, Part 5

Welcome to Part 5 of Six Degrees of Plácido Domingo, where we’ll be exploring opera’s current #MeToo reckoning through four centuries of misogyny and misconduct in the genre’s history — onstage and off. Catch up with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 for full effect.

As The Great Caruso lays it out, Enrico Caruso met Dorothy Park Benjamin shortly before his Met debut. The heavily-fictionalized 1951 biopic presents the introduction as a comedy of errors between Caruso, what’s seemingly a teenaged Dorothy (though the sailor dress school uniform doesn’t do much to make 23-year–old Ann Blyth look so young), and her father, the aristocratic and autocratic Park Benjamin. After a tepid Met debut in Aida, Park tells Giulio Gatti-Casazza that it was a mistake to have hired “the peasant,” and Caruso (in the room at the time) declares he will never sing again in America. 

Dorothy convinces Caruso (played by Mario Lanza) to sing again that night in La Bohème, and to reconsider his threat to leave …