SINGERS' BIOGRAPHIES, told by themselves or by hangers-on are generally
pretty embarrassing to read. Gigli's Memoirs, published earlier this year, are one of the exceptions. Possibly he had some help with the writing, which is very polished. But no 'ghost' could have created the sympathetic personality that they reveal, of a man quietly and unassertively sure of his own value, and genuinely modest. There is no self-glorification, little senti- ment, and no jealousy. Not that he had much cause for jealousy : he sang for forty years, and for thirty-five of them, after the death of Caruso, he had no real rival to his title as the world's most popular tenor. In his later years criticism mellowed towards him. He became, like Caruso, the old master, the 'last' of the great line, and he began to be used as a stick to beat his successors with, as he himself had suffered in his early days.
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