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Enrico Caruso
Enrico Caruso became one of the first major recording artists in history, and his early 20th-century phonograph recordings, made when the technology was still commercially unproven, are widely credited with helping establish recorded music as a legitimate and commercially viable mainstream medium. His powerful, richly colored tenor voice made him the most celebrated opera singer of the early 20th century, and Caruso's regular performances at New York's Metropolitan Opera over nearly two decades established him as opera's first genuinely international recording-era celebrity. Caruso's commercial recording success generated substantial royalties that helped demonstrate to a skeptical music industry that recorded classical and operatic music could achieve genuine mass-market commercial viability, directly influencing the broader recording industry's subsequent investment in classical artists. His combination of genuine vocal artistry and his foundational role in establishing recorded music's commercial legitimacy has made Caruso one of the most historically significant figures in both opera and the broader development of the recording industry itself.
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Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti became one of the most commercially significant opera singers in history, and his participation in "The Three Tenors" concerts alongside Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, beginning in 1990, brought opera to a mainstream global television audience far larger than the genre had previously reached. His nine consecutive curtain calls following a 1972 performance of "Ah! mes amis" from Donizetti's La fille du régiment, a notoriously difficult aria containing nine high C notes, earned him a listing in Guinness World Records and cemented his reputation for that specific technical vocal feat. Pavarotti's warm, powerful tenor voice and his genuinely approachable, larger-than-life public persona made him the opera singer most recognizable to audiences with no particular prior interest in classical music, and his charity concerts raised substantial funds for humanitarian causes worldwide. His combination of genuine vocal technical mastery and his unprecedented mainstream crossover success has made Pavarotti the individual most responsible for opera's broader 20th-century popularization beyond its traditional dedicated audience.
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