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Updated: May 19, 2025
Messiani went to the piano and struck a chord. The weeping boy piped up in a tone so thin and feeble that it was almost indistinguishable. "Louder!" yelled the big singer, with another full chord. Caruso obeyed and kept on through the scale.
The maestro was not so enthusiastic as Messiani, but he promised to do what he could. He offered to instruct Caruso four years, only demanding 25 per cent. of his pupil's receipts for his first five years in opera. Caruso signed such a contract willingly, although he realized afterward that he was the victim of a veritable Shylock.
Seizing a heavy brass candlestick, he hurled it at Messiani with all his force, but it missed the baritone and landed in a mirror. "Hold, madman!" interposed the startled singer. "Your voice is not gone. It is magnificent. You will be the tenor of the century." Messiani sent him to Vergine, then the most celebrated trainer of the voice in Italy.
It was Messiani, the famous baritone, who had always felt an interest in the boy and who would not release him in spite of his vigorous efforts to escape. The big baritone took him to his lodging and when he had succeeded in cheering the unhappy lad into a momentary forgetfulness of his misery asked him to sing. "But I can't," sobbed Caruso. "It has gone!"
Then Messiani jumped up from the piano stool, seized the astonished boy about the waist and raised him high off his feet, at the same time yelling at the top of his voice: "What a little jackass! What a little idiot!" Almost bursting with rage, for the miserable boy thought his friend was making sport of him, Caruso searched the apartment for some weapon with which he might avenge himself.
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