In the days before recorded music was widely available, hard-touring classical musicians regularly gave concerts even in out-of-the-way places in Europe and North America. So it’s no surprise that Enrico Caruso, considered the world’s greatest tenor at the time, stopped in Fort Worth in 1920, when the city’s population was slightly larger than 100,000. (For perspective, that’s smaller than Irving is today.) This Thursday, Fort Worth Opera seeks to re-create that special moment 95 years later.
The company’s Caruso in Cowtown is being held in Cowtown Coliseum, the same venue where Caruso held his concert — the facility would have been fairly new back then, having opened in 1908. Tenor Stephen Costello steps into the formidable shoes of the Neapolitan singer to perform the same program. You may find the four items by Sir Paolo Tosti, the Italian-British composer of sentimental songs, not to your taste, but the rest of the program has aged well, with arias from operas by Puccini, Donizetti, Leoncavallo, and Gounod. There’s a pricey fundraiser for Fort Worth Opera going on before the music starts, but you can buy a ticket to the concert alone for a reasonable sum. The city’s slogan of “Cowboys and Culture” will never feel more real than when this rodeo and country music venue hosts an opera recital.
Caruso in Cowtown starts at 8:15pm Thu at Cowtown Coliseum, 121 E Exchange Av, FW. Tickets are $25. Call 817-288-1214.
