Uploaded March 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
American soprano Carolina White (1883-1961)
Roberto, tu che adoro (opera)
Robert le diable (Meyerbeer)
Recorded: October 24, 1911 in New York
The following is from The Record Collector / Volume 64, No. 3 / October 2019:
Carolina White (1883-1961). White enjoyed a short but spectacular operatic career as a lirico-spinto soprano, especially in Chicago, in roles such as Santuzza, Minnie, Elsa and Manon Lescaut. The final years of her career were spent in Vaudeville, which she found congenial and financially advantageous, yet during her opera career she appeared with enormous success and garnered superb reviews from the critics.
White has a claim to fame which most collectors would not have realised. Attractive and slim of figure, she was chosen to play Rosa Ventura in the 1918 silent film, My Cousin, in which Enrico Caruso plays a dual role, that of an impecunious sculptor and a famous tenor. There has been a widely-circulated clip of the moment when Rosa first sees the two together in the restaurant, looking incredulously at the two men who are exact doubles. Many will have seen it without realizing that it was a famous contemporary soprano who was playing the role.She has been dealt an unfortunate hand by posterity. She recorded mainly for Columbia, during a period when the company’s recordings were at their dimmest and their shellac material at its noisiest. The voice which emerges from these discs is but a shadow of what it must have been on stage. Thankfully, the discovery of the unpublished Edison discs from 1910 (published by Marston), give us a truer reflection of her talents, and several are quite thrilling in their intensity. To compare the voice on the Edison and Columbia discs is revelatory.
****************************
American soprano Carolina White (1883-1961)
Roberto, tu che adoro (opera)
Robert le diable (Meyerbeer)
Recorded: October 24, 1911 in New York
The following is from The Record Collector / Volume 64, No. 3 / October 2019:
Carolina White (1883-1961). White enjoyed a short but spectacular operatic career as a lirico-spinto soprano, especially in Chicago, in roles such as Santuzza, Minnie, Elsa and Manon Lescaut. The final years of her career were spent in Vaudeville, which she found congenial and financially advantageous, yet during her opera career she appeared with enormous success and garnered superb reviews from the critics.
White has a claim to fame which most collectors would not have realised. Attractive and slim of figure, she was chosen to play Rosa Ventura in the 1918 silent film, My Cousin, in which Enrico Caruso plays a dual role, that of an impecunious sculptor and a famous tenor. There has been a widely-circulated clip of the moment when Rosa first sees the two together in the restaurant, looking incredulously at the two men who are exact doubles. Many will have seen it without realizing that it was a famous contemporary soprano who was playing the role.She has been dealt an unfortunate hand by posterity. She recorded mainly for Columbia, during a period when the company’s recordings were at their dimmest and their shellac material at its noisiest. The voice which emerges from these discs is but a shadow of what it must have been on stage. Thankfully, the discovery of the unpublished Edison discs from 1910 (published by Marston), give us a truer reflection of her talents, and several are quite thrilling in their intensity. To compare the voice on the Edison and Columbia discs is revelatory.
****************************
