 Producer Jesse Lasky paid Caruso $100,000 each to appear in these two efforts but "My Cousin" flopped at the box office and "The Splendid Romance" was apparently never released.Brief candid glimpses of Caruso offstage have been preserved in contemporary newsreel footage.While Caruso sang at such venues as La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House, in London, the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, he appeared most often at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City where he was the leading tenor for 18 consecutive seasons.