Yes, he was.

And why should I write about him now? Well, because I was thinking, and you know how that goes. One thing leads to another. Sometimes you wonder where you are and how you got there.

I’m not sure how I got started, probably possibly maybe because I chanced to notice my tendency to be judgmental to the extent of too judgmental. Which led me to the conditions for judgment, and the final choice.

Enrico Caruso was considered, is considered, generally acknowledged, maybe, almost universally, considered to be and have been The Greatest of All Time.

We’re talking tenors. Singers. Voices. And that’s the voice range which gets the limelight because, you know, the boy gets the girl, or loses the girl, but he’s protagonist because he has the young voice range and we always want to be young and stay young. That’s just life.

Baritones can be the father or brother or older relative or rejected suitor or the villain.

The tenor is the hero.

The bass voice is so low he’s the priest or philosopher or devil.

Caruso is on my lists. Lists of joy and regret. Joy that I can hear him, even if only on records. Regret that I can hear him only on records.

I don’t know much about him, as I don’t know much about anything, but I’ve concluded and decided that I would very much like to have known him.

Yes, he had the voice one could only hope for. Other tenors listen to his records in awe and affirmation and say, “Yes!”

It was a voice of beauty and power, clarity throughout, no breaks, gimmicks, tricks. It was an honest voice. It could ring through the room, and understand the music, and embody it.

Caruso was a man of the people. He loved people. He’d get out of the car and mingle with the crowd. He’d join you in a drink, draw your portrait on a napkin, sign it, give it to you.

He knew who he was, but didn’t flaunt it. He knew how lucky he was to sing in a Golden Age where his colleagues matched him. Titta Ruffo, that large baritone voice. Rosa Ponselle, that equivalent soprano they called “Caruso in petticoats.”

He inspired composers to write tenor great.

And he liked jokes. He liked telling them, and receiving them.

He knew how to live. And eat.

He embodied joy.

He was my kind of guy.

He was a role model, something I’m always reaching for. The very fact of him gives me hope and enriches my life.

Though I never knew him, and know very little about him, he makes the world better, and I thank him for that.