After finishing my time in the Army, I went to graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. I rented a small apartment, but I found it difficult to cook meals with so much time in classes and studying. I finally found a boarding house down the street where I had dinner most evenings. The other boarders knew nothing about classical music — but I was able to make friends with them. When my graduate voice recital came up, I invited all of them to come hear me sing. Early in the recital, I noticed that my boarder friends were clearly out of the comfort of their world and somewhat bored with the recital…until I sang “Vesti la Giubba” from Leoncavallo’s opera, “Pagliacci”. That music somehow grabbed their interest and drew their hearty applause afterwards.  After that, they started treating me as if I was a hero!

It wasn’t until dinner the next day that I learned what had caused such wild excitement. At our next dinner, they surrounded me and asked, “How did you ever learn to sing the Rice Krispies commercial in Italian?” What I had not known was that one of the most popular television commercials of the day was an operatic tenor singing the same tune, but to the words, “There’s no Rice Krispies. We are out of Rice Krispies!” I, of course, responded to them that it wasn’t easy, but never told them the truth.