On this day the opera singer Enrico Caruso gave his last performance with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City as Eléazar in Halévy’s La Juive. His health had started to decline rapidly in the autumn of that year and on Christmas Day the pain was so excruciating that he was screaming. He was given morphine and codeine and diagnosed with pleurisy. The following year, he began to show some signs of improvement towards the late spring, and in May he was well enough to travel back to Naples. However, his health deteriorated drastically during the summer months and on 2nd August he died in his room at the Hotel Vesuvius, on his way from Sorrento to the Bastianelli’s clinic in Rome. He was just 48 years old.
