A century and a half after his birth, Italian tenor and opera legend Enrico Caruso is finally being celebrated by his hometown of Naples with a new museum. Long before Luciano Pavarotti, it was Caruso who represented Italian opera to the rest of the world, ushering in an era of music for the masses with his prolific recordings at the advent of the gramophone industry.

Born in 1873, the tenor and his international career are the focus of a small museum housed within the city's Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale) that opened to the public on Wednesday. "He was the greatest tenor ever known to the world," curator Laura Valente told AFP. "Because beyond his great talent and extraordinary voice, he forged a new way of singing and expressing himself on stage, in this sense like Maria Callas," she said.