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