By Paul Goldfinger (Editor @Blogfinger and owner of a Sousa fan fan)
Prior to the orchestral concert on July 29, 2010 in the GA, Mr. John Shaw, the Hope-Jones organ curator, stood before the audience to offer a prayer and to introduce the program. He also mentioned something that was potentially intriguing to those who are interested in music and Ocean Grove history. He said, and I paraphrase, “Exactly one hundred years ago, John Phillip Sousa and Enrico Caruso appeared together on this stage.” But Mr. Shaw did not elaborate.
John Phillip Sousa
Enrico Caruso
So, here is the Blogfinger Historical Fiction Contest springing to life. Send us a brief (no more that 4 sentences) account of what those two musical giants were doing on the stage of the GA in 1910. The top three winners will receive an original Ocean Grove car magnet. (For those of you who want a magnet but do not want to participate, you can buy them at News ‘n Such on Main Avenue)
Here is the first entry by P Goldfinger who is not eligible for a prize:
1910: Enrico Caruso, the great tenor, hit a high note last week at the Met and hurt his groin. He came to the Grove for some R and R, staying at the Abbott House. His old buddy J.P. Sousa was playing a concert in the Great Auditorium and he called Caruso up to the stage to take a bow and to sit in the piccolo section for the playing of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Caruso, who could not play the piccolo, was content to hum along.
J.P. Sousa: “The Thunderer.”
Although Caruso never performed Rossini’s opera “The Barber of Seville,” he was, in fact, something of a barber himself. Caruso’s operatic roles often called for him to wear fake mustaches and other forms of facial hair, which he personally “harvested” from the faces of other men. Sousa was known for having particularly luxuriant beard hair, which Caruso came to prize above that of all others. Therefore, from time to time the great tenor would give the famous March King a free haircut and beard trim in exchange for being allowed to keep and use the clippings. It was for this purpose that Caruso came to Sousa’s Ocean Grove performance in 1910.
In November 1906, Caruso was charged with an indecent act allegedly committed in the monkey house of New York’s Central Park Zoo. The police accused him of pinching the bottom of a married woman. Caruso claimed a monkey did the bottom-pinching. In 1910, looking for a character witness of upstanding reputation, he volunteered to appear with John Philip Sousa in the Great Auditorium in exchange for Sousa’s recommendation that Caruso be forgiven.