Reception
The Great Caruso was a commercial success. It earned an estimated $4.5 million in rentals in the US and Canada on release and was the most popular movie at the British box office in 1951.
Newsweek wrote that, "Lanza brings to the role not only a fine, natural and remarkably powerful voice, but a physique and personal mannerisms reminiscent of the immortal Caruso." According to Bosley Crowther, the film is "perhaps the most elaborate 'pops' concert ever played upon the screen"; Blyth's voice is "reedy" but "Lanza has an excellent young tenor voice and...uses it in his many numbers with impressive dramatic power. Likewise, Miss Kirsten and Miss Thebom are ladies who can rock the welkin, too, and their contributions to the concert maintain it at a musical high." Crowther says "All of the silliest, sappiest clichés of musical biography have been written by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig into the script. And Richard Thorpe has directed in a comparably mawkish, bathetic style."
Nearly 40 years after its release, Caruso's son, Enrico Jr. reminisced that, "Vocally and musically The Great Caruso ...has helped many young people discover opera and even become singers themselves."He added that, "I can think of no other tenor, before or since Mario Lanza, who could have risen with comparable success to the challenge of playing Caruso in a screen biography." The film has also been cited by tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras as having been an inspiration for them when they were growing up.
Read more about this topic: The Great Caruso
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
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