TWO words you might not normally put into the same sentence: are “Caruso” and “earthquake”. But the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was indeed caught up in the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and the Mexican actor-singer Ignacio Jarquin is now touring Ireland with a one-man show that tells the story of his escape in words, music and physical theatre.
Over coffee at the Morrison Hotel in Dublin, Jarquin sets the scene. “We are trapped in the docks,” he says. “We have made it but now we are waiting for a boat to take us to safety. I enter the stage through the same door as the audience – we are all refugees – but I go straight to the police and say, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ So this obnoxious, self-obsessed celebrity appears on stage without taking any notice of the audience whatsoever.
“Eventually he realises that he is not alone. And because he’s savvy – he knows his fortune is based on the adulation of the general public – he becomes very charming.
“In times of great distress, people bond with each other very quickly. I will tell you my story and you will tell me your story. So that is what I do.”
But Caruso doesn’t necessarily tell the truth – which makes for interesting theatre. “He was a liar, you know?” says Jarquin with a delighted smile. “In his biography, each time he talks about the earthquake he comes out of it more glorious and victorious and heroic – which makes him very human. He probably was very frightened. He was a very rich man, and everybody knew that. He had money and jewels with him. So he really was in danger of his life. He could have been robbed and killed and that would have been that.”
Jarquin – who, even over a cup of coffee, combines a tenor's charm with an actor's lithe enthusiasm – is under no illusions about his subject. The man who was lionised in a Hollywood movie as " The Great Caruso" came from fairly humble beginnings. "His father was a mechanic, and he had alcohol problems and all that kind of stuff."
In the show Jarquin is called on to produce a range of characters. “The president of the US,” he says. “The Kaiser. Caruso was friend and operatic adviser to both of them – or, at least, he said so. And I play his valet, as well.”
The music also plays a role. “The songs come at very emotional points in the story, but how to bring them in without going, ‘and now I sing a song’, that was the challenge.”
The first number, Federico's Lamentfrom Francesco Cilea's L'Arlesiana, begins with a murmured recitative – an operatic device designed to manage exactly that transition from "spoken" dialogue to full-blown aria.
There's a spot of Puccini as well as Vesti la Giubba from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci– Caruso's signature tune – and a couple of Neapolitan songs including, inevitably, O Sole Mio.
Jarquin doesn’t set out to impersonate one of the greatest singers of all time. “What tenor in his right mind would do that?” he asks, with a very Latin shrug.
Instead, the show is an affectionate homage and – above all – an entertainment.
“It swings very quickly between comic moments and great tragedy,” he says. “That’s what happens when you’re in a very tricky situation. In the moment, it may be a terrible thing, but when you look back at it, you laugh.”
Caruso and the Quake is on a nationwide tour throughout November. Details and tickets from carusoandthequake.wordpress.com); The Helix (Feb 6th); and the Strule Arts Centre, Omagh (Feb 10th)
