Free Republic

Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that his colleague Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was like the fictional mobster Tony Soprano when discussing the gold bars detailed in the lawmaker’s indictment on federal bribery charges. Fetterman said, “Honestly, I was actually surprised that I was the first one. I mean, it’s so black and white. I mean, it’s so clear. The last time there’s ever been a man with so much cash in their home in New Jersey was Tony Soprano. You know? I mean, it’s not a— it’s not a— it’s not a close call, and...

Phyllis Curtin, an American soprano celebrated as a champion of new music, died on Sunday at her home in Great Barrington, Mass. She was 94... A mainstay of the New York City Opera in the 1950s and ’60s, Ms. Curtin was noted for the purity of her voice, the sensitivity of her musical phrasing and the crystalline perfection of her diction. On the opera stage and in recital, she gave the premieres of dozens of works by 20th-century composers — “more first, and last, performances than any singer in history,” as she was fond of saying, ruefully...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie complained in a phone call with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that a Port Authority official has been wading too deeply into controversial and potentially politically explosive lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, according to a report Thursday. The issue involves bridge toll lanes in Fort Lee, N.J., that were cut from three to one in September, causing a massive traffic backups. Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have accused Christie of ordering the closures to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, a Democrat, for not endorsing his reelection bid for governor. Christie’s campaign has denied the...

Blagojevich, Rezko, and The Mob. Alexi Giannoulias would make Tony Soprano Proud.

Earlier in the season, when Tony was out on the lake with Bobby, he asked what the end would be like. Bobby said something to the effect of probably everything would go black and you probably wouldn't even hear it coming. Tony had a flashback of that conversation before going to bed in the second to last episode of the series. In the end, he didn't hear the shot coming, but he died with his family just as Phil died with his. Then everything went black, just as Bobby predicted.

It's never over till it's over" goes the familiar refrain. This time, though, it's truly over for The Sopranos. The quintessentially American family epic raises the curtain on the first of its nine final episodes tonight. The final aria will be sung June 10. The final scene was filmed in a wholesome family ice cream parlour, in Bloomfield, N.J. and includes James Gandolfini's gangster don and family man Tony Soprano, Edie Falco's pragmatic -- and legit -- mob moll Carmela Soprano and Tony Sirico's immaculately coiffed capo Peter Paul Gualtieri, a.k.a. Paulie Walnuts, a movie buff and debt collector given...

This is funny.

WASHINGTON (June 11) - A musician long before she became an academic and then a world-famous diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took to the Kennedy Center concert stage Saturday to accompany a young soprano battling an often-fatal disease. Rice's rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano marked a striking departure from her routine as America's No. 1 diplomat.

June 20, 2005, 12:09AM Texas group denies boy's bid to sing soprano in All-State Choir Associated Press Mikhael Rawls sits in his music room at his home in Bedford. The Texas Music Association has denied his application to sing soprano in the All-State Choir because of his gender. BEDFORD — Singing soprano is for girls only in Texas' All-State Choir, eliminating a 17-year-old boy's chance to audition for a statewide honor and raising questions about gender and vocal performance. The Texas Music Educators Association denied a petition by Mikhael Rawls of suburban Fort Worth to audition this fall for the...

Singing soprano is for girls only in Texas' elite All-State Choir, eliminating a 17-year-old boy's chance to audition for a statewide honor and raising questions about gender discrimination. The Texas Music Educators Association on June 15 denied a request from Mikhael Rawls to audition this fall as a soprano, a part traditionally sung by girls. Rawls sings countertenor, a little known male voice part that has surged in popularity in classical and operatic circles. He can sing an octave and a half higher than most boys his age, and he feels most comfortable singing in that range. He has even...

Geoff Huish, 26, was so convinced England would win Saturday's match he told fellow drinkers at a social club, "If Wales win I'll cut my balls off", the paper said on Tuesday. Friends at the club in Caerphilly, south Wales, thought he was joking. But after the game Huish went home, severed his testicles with a knife, and walked 200 metres back to the bar with the testicles to show the shocked drinkers what he had done. Huish was taken to hospital where he remained in a seriously ill condition, the paper said. Police told the paper he had a...

The Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles, whose sweet-toned lyric voice and beguiling expressivity earned her a devoted following during a career of more than four decades, died overnight Friday in a hospital in Barcelona, a spokesman for the Liceu Opera there said. Ms. de los Angeles, who was 81, had been admitted to the city's Teknon clinic with cardiorespiratory problems on New Year's Eve. For sheer loveliness of timbre, affecting sensitivity, elegance of line and utter ease in florid passagework, she was hard to top. By the 1950's she was a mainstay of opera houses around the world and...

I am curious if any Freepers have seen the Phantom in movie form. For those of us who are old enough, it seems impossible that anyone could match Crawford and Brightman and the London Symphony. Having read the play, I can only say that the opera surpasses it by far. And Webber, no matter what his politics are, is an extraordinary genius.

I never thought I would say I would be hooked to country music, but unfortunately, in the afternoons, I'm not supposed to be doing such, but I find it tempting to want to hear the chorus of the controversial Gretchen Peters-written and Radio Disney-modified "Independence Day": Let freedom ring Let the white dove sing Let the whole world know today Is a Day of Reckoning Let the weak be strong Let the Left be wrong Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay It's Independence Day . . . (switches to a choral music setting, more of which I am...

Revealed: why you can't understand what an opera soprano is singing By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 08/01/2004) Physicists have discovered the reason why even operas sung in English are hard to follow. A study has found that in order for sopranos to be heard above the sound of a large symphony orchestra, they tune into resonances in their vocal tract to amplify the sound at the high end of their range. Although this enables them to make a sound that can fill the Albert Hall, it sacrifices intelligibility because the vowels sung by sopranos in full voice all sound...

Yes my friends it is time for my annual Left Wing College Entry! Unforunately I have reformatted my computer since the last entry and lost the ping list! Thats ok because I'm sure many of you will want to read this. Last year I had annual entries from a liberal college professor and ar argument I had with a girl on Iraq. This year to start things off I will post an argument with a girl. This argument was over guns. The poor girl was clearly outmatched. She thought she was a Conservative Republican and when I asked her why...

I once met Johnny Dio, a famous gangster for Murder, Inc. I was having dinner with my family at Frankie and Johnny's, a popular steak restaurant in midtown Manhattan, and he spotted my father the bookie, whom he knew casually. He came over to our table and Daddy introduced us. He was charming to a teenage girl, extending his hand to shake mine. He wore gray suede gloves (which he did not remove) that suggested a luxurious life and, as I deliciously imagined, left no fingerprints on a gun. I was glad our hands didn't actually touch, but I was...