The Great Caruso formats. The album featured eight popular opera arias sung by Lanza, accompanied by Constantine Callinicos conducting the RCA Victor Orchestra. The first operatic LP to sell over one million copies, the album remained continuously available after its original 1951 release and was reissued by RCA Victor on compact disc in 1989. The Great Caruso The Great Caruso is a 1951 biographical film made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starring Mario Lanza as the great operatic tenor Enrico Caruso. It was directed by Richard Thorpe, and produced by Joe Pasternak, with Jesse L. Lasky as associate producer, from a screenplay by Sonya Levien
The Great Caruso 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."