(2 of 2)
Later, apparently fully recovered, Caruso sang four performances, the last on Christmas Eve. The next day he collapsed. His trouble, diagnosed as acute pleurisy, worsened. He had several operations for abscesses of the lungs. Early in the summer of 1921 he sailed for Naples. There, a few weeks later, in a waterfront hotel room from which he could look out on Mt. Vesuvius, Enrico Caruso died. His body, embalmed and buried for two years, was subsequently disinterred, carried in state through the Naples streets to its final resting place in the Campo Santo di Poggioreale cemetery. For several years thereafter the cemetery's gatekeeper was reported to have done a rushing business in tips showing Caruso's body to visiting tourists. In the late '20s the Caruso family put a stop to the tourist traffic, caused a stout slab of marble to be placed over the tomb, locked up the chapel and sequestered the key.