Two Sentences, Not About HonK's

He’s handsome and blind and Italian and a tenor and quite the rage among opera lovers who never go to the opera, the ones who know Luciano Pavarotti because of the three tenors and all the hype that went with them and Cecilia Bartolli because she’s been interviewed on television—that great equalizer and spreader of culture to anyone who’ll watch PBS—or who know of Enrico Caruso because he was the answer to a question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Still, he has a glorious voice, rich and true of pitch and clearly Italian in its tenor timbre, and I wonder if his blindness makes him a better singer than if he had sight, better because he isn’t distracted by lights or the movements of the orchestra conductor or fidgety audience members who may figure because he can’t see them they can slouch or stretch or yawn, as if opera goers would ever slouch or stretch or yawn, and who may have forgotten that he can hear and probably better than most of us who have seeing eyes and are easily pulled off course by whatever is going on around us.