This is a superb book. This is writing that warms and serves the heart of all who love great art. It does great honor to its great subject, the unique and incomparable lyric tenor, Tito Schipa. And it does honor to its author, who knows how to reveal the greatness of his subject by giving a frank and honest portrayal of the ordinary facts that are known about his life, by giving unreserved praise of those qualities which made Ttio Schipa a divine gift to the world, and by writing about feeling matters from the position of a feeling man. For those who are fortunate enough to be already enraptured by the Tito Schipa magic, reading this book will be a joyous event, a celebration of beauty and love, and a reminder of all the dimensions of what it is to be human. For those who are led by this book to listen for the first time, or the first time with real attention, to recordings of Tito Schipa, they may look forward to a wonderful enrichment of their lives. The book includes a compact disc containing 20 selections from Tito Schipa’s recordings, lovingly chosen to both cover the range of the master’s art, and to provide a few of his utterly unique accomplishments that have not been made available to date on other published collections. For those who are or who aspire to be singers in the bel canto tradition, there is surely no better model than this man and these recordings.