Enrico Caruso only three to survive infancy. There is a story of Caruso's parents having had 21 children, 18 of whom died in infancy. However, on the basis of genealogical research (amongst others conducted by Caruso family friend Guido D'Onofrio), biographers Pierre Key, Francis Robinson, and Enrico Caruso Jr. and Andrew Farkas, have proven this to be an urban legend. Caruso himself and his brother Giovanni may have been the source of the exaggerated number. Caruso's widow Dorothy also included the story in a memoir that she wrote about her husband. She quotes the tenor, speaking of his mother, Anna Caruso ("née"
Girolamo Caruso Girolamo Caruso Girolamo Caruso (September 18, 1842, Alcamo, province of Trapani – January 2, 1923, Pisa), was an Italian agronomist and university teacher. He was born in Alcamo and graduated in Agriculture at the university of Naples in 1861. After spending some years in the army, first as a volunteer and later as commissioner of Military engineering, in 1864 he was appointed as teacher of agriculture at the agrarian provincial school of Corleone (Palermo), and its director until 1867, when he moved to Messina to teach at the Technical Institute. Nel 1862, aged only 20, Caruso started to deal with