What sets Gigli apart from nearly all other 20th-century tenors? His singing is full of contrast. Such 19th-century holdovers as De Lucia varied dynamics, tone color, rhythm and, sometimes, notes. Most singers since at best have had or have created one sonority of individual character, at one dynamic level. Caruso and those who followed him mostly sang at full voice. Pavarotti and company do little varying of dynamics and seldom shade their tones, using the same color to express both happiness and sadness. Gigli had many sonorities and two basic dynamic levels, loud and soft. Non ti scordar di me finds him in peak form and provides a key to some of his best art, making clear that it was based on chiaroscuro--the contrasting of tone colors, usually in response to words, and of soft passages with loud. He repeats the title song, singing it differently. Gigli made extensive use of a vocal technique known as "covering," involving darkening the tone and modifying vowels, almost as if some were schwas (like the "uh" sounds in "America"). Early in the film he sings a song, "Mille cherubini in coro," "closed"; repeating it later, he covers so heavily that if you aren"t sure to what the term refers, you"ll know after hearing him do it. For this film, one of Gigli"s accompanists, composer Ernesto De Curtis, wrote "Non ti scordar di me" and "Addio bel sogno," while Alois Melichar fashioned Schubert"s "Wiegenlied," into "Mille cherubini in coro." - Stefan Zucker