Vicente Celestino
photo: gordini / rio · public domain ↗Vicente Celestino was an Italian-Brazilian singer who, as a nine-year-old chorister in a Rio production of Bizet's Carmen, caught the attention of tenor Enrico Caruso — a formative encounter he carried into formal lyrical-singing study at the Teatro Municipal and roles in Puccini's Tosca and Verdi's Aida through the early 1920s. He carried that bel canto training into Brazilian popular song, becoming Francisco Alves' idol and, in his own right, a matinee idol whose 1936 recording of his own composition 'O Ébrio' became the basis of a hugely successful 1946 film directed by his wife, Gilda de Abreu.
As a child chorister, Celestino 'caught the attention' of Caruso during a children's-choir performance of Carmen — a formative encounter Brazilian biographical sources single out alongside his admiration for Maurice Chevalier — before he went on to study formal bel canto technique himself. He later put the lineage on record directly, cutting a Portuguese-language version of Caruso's signature aria. Flagging honestly: this is a single sourced influence, an idolizing encounter rather than formal study under Caruso, which is why Vicente Celestino's record stops at one influence instead of three.
listen forCaruso's 1907 'Vesti la giubba' is the textbook of sustained operatic power breaking into vulnerable sobs on the high notes; Celestino's own Portuguese 'Palhaço' follows the same emotional arc and vocal weight almost beat for beat, just sung in his adopted language.