Enrico Caruso: The First Neapolitan Star

Abstract

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the foremost entertainment publication in the Italian language on the east coast of the United States was La Follia di New York, a weekly devoted to humor and varying in size from eight to fourteen pages. The newspaper’s masthead depicted the face of a woman against the background of skyscrapers, and the woman wore a ribbon on her head on which was written the Latin phrase “castigat ridendo mores” (one corrects customs through laughter). The newspaper was founded in 1893 by Francesco Sisca and his sons Alessandro (the director who went by the pseudonym Riccardo Cordiferro) and Marziale, the editor-in-chief.¹ The newspaper office was located at 169 Mott Street in Manhattan.