Hello - I'm new here. My name is Fernando Gobbi. I am not a musician.
But I love the classical music very much. I listen to it all the time.
I live in a nice Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York called Carrol
Gardens. It's very safe. So you hear lots of opera, just like in the
movie Moonstruck. Once I remember an old landlord in the neighborhood
who didn't like the music and tried to get every body out of his building.
So every night he put a tape recording down the chimney of Wanda Lanowski
(some name lika that)playing this very noisy tinkly piano, like it had
tacks on the strings. It drove us crazy! Last I heard that guy gotta
whacked for squelching on a debt. I don't know if that's true. But now
nobody has no trouble for listen to the operas, especially us old timers.
I love Aida and Tosca most of all. I love all Italian music I hear,
even Scarlatti. I like to hear Toscanini,too. I like that Callas, too,
even thuough she is a Greek. So nobody's perfect. But Pavarotti is my
favorite. I hear him in the Park. He is so fat he can fill up the stadium
all by himself. That's good for a singer, no? That Domingo fella is pretty
good, too,but his Italian sounds funny to me and it's like he sings
everything with a Puerto Rican accent. I think he is from San Juan. I
like Italians who play piano, but you know Liberace was not Italian. he
was Polish. I don't think he play piano very good. But you know this guy
Pollini - my friend Pauly (we call him "no neck") took me to the Carnegie
Hall over there on 7th avenus. What a place that is! Beautiful. So this
guy Pollini - a real Italian, but not Sicilian- he plays beautiful! He
played Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven like he was floating a on ocean liner.
I get seaskick sitting there and had to leave. Later I help myself to big
calamari at a pretty good restaurant down the street. But I never forget,
because I went on a big Italian ship with my wife about 15 years ago called
the Oceanic. They had good music on that boat,too - some piano player
played real good Chopin including my favorite the polonaise. you know I
once met a famous musician. Not Toscanini, though - he was rich and lived
in the Bronx, maybe a little snooty. But I met this beautiful Italian gal
who played the violin named Morini. Her people were from Calabrese I
think, maybe Parma. I don't remember. It was a long time ago. She played
great, and even made some records. I got one somewhere around here - maybe
out in the garage. OK, I gotta go now because my wife she's screaming at
me and dinner is getting cold. Smells good - she makes tonight a linguine
tuttomare. OK bye.
Fernando Gobbi
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