He became a regular, and his stage training began in earnest amid the thick smoke of the music hall. When he was old enough to understand, he realized that his nearly nightly appearances had less to do with the velvet of his young voice and more do with the antics of the “dancers” before they got to the dressing room. They were either too drunk, too pregnant or too beaten up to make the stage. And so it was that though he knew that the spotlight was his by default, he believed it was The Great Caruso that kept him there because he earned it.
Young Pietro chose only to think about the man wearing the shiniest shoes in the hall, watching Pietro proudly from the dark pit that was “the audience.” If he closed his eyes after his song, during the strong applause (which surprised everybody, beca
