Francesco Tamagno heard on the stages of London and New York during the late-Victorian Era. Tamagno, however, refused to perform Wagnerian works, even in Italian translation; he believed that the tessitura of the music written for Wagner's tenor heroes lay too low to suit his vocal range. Tamagno lived long enough to witness the rise to fame of the young Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). He admired Caruso's ability, predicting as far back as 1898 that Caruso would go on to become the number-one Italian tenor of the 20th century. As M. J. Phillips-Matz observes in her 2002 Puccini biography, Tamagno and Caruso actually
Rick Caruso his wife Tina donated a further $25 million to USC, to endow and name the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. He sits on the board of the National Institute of Transplantation and is on the Board of Saint John’s Hospital and The California Medical Center Foundation. In 1995, Caruso was named Alumnus of the Year by Pepperdine School of Law. Caruso was named by the Los Angeles Business Journal as "Developer of the Year" and its 2012 Ernst & Young LLP Master Entrepreneur of the Year. He is married to Tina Caruso;