Name/Title
NewspaperEntry/Object ID
2017.030.1707Scope and Content
This is the S.F. Call newspaper of 04/17/1906. It is the fashion section of the newspaper. Besides photos of society women who were at the SF Opera. The star that night was Caruso. This is interesting because of the various stories about Caruso being caught in the SF earthquake.
At the beginning of the 1900s, Enrico Caruso had already become a legend in music. The Italian tenor had taken the world of opera by storm with his elegant performances on the stages of the most famous opera houses in Europe. Hence it was not surprising that Caruso's first ever appearance in San Francisco was celebrated all over town. On Tuesday, April 17, 1906, Caruso sang magically as Don Jose in Bizet's opera Carmen on the stage of the city's new opera house. The building, illuminated brilliantly by what was then the novelty of electric light, took up a whole block of Mission, between Third and Fourth, roughly where the Yerba Buena Gardens and the Metreon are located now.
Caruso, who spent the night after his performance in a suite on the fifth floor of the Palace Hotel, described the shaking as if "an ocean liner was tossed around by heavy seas." Looking out the hotel window, he saw buildings collapse and people buried alive by brick walls, which came tumbling down. The frightened tenor left the City in a hurry a few hours later, and hence escaped before the second act of the disaster took its even more destructive course than the first.Collection
Benicia Historical Museum Collection
