Enrico Caruso

Among the many anecdotes that link the Grand Hotel et de Milan to the great figures of Italian Opera, one concerns the tenor Enrico Caruso, to whom Junior Suite 306 is dedicated. The tenor was in Milan to sing at La Scala under Arturo Toscanini direction. In the same period, Fred Gaisberg, a pioneer of phonographic recording at the Voce del Padrone record company, asked the tenor to record some opera arias from "Germania" and Caruso had a sort of recording studio set up in his hotel: it was here that the first flat matrix record in the history of music was realized. Gaisberg was so enthusiastic about Caruso's voice that, despite the record company's refusal to pay the exorbitant sum of one hundred pounds requested by the tenor, he paid out of his own pocket in order to record his voice.