If it had not been for these thing, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure . . .
These famous words, written by Bartolomeo Vanzetti shortly before his execution with Nicolo Sacco in 1927, may well be sung before long from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House—and quite an aria they would make for Leonard Warren or Giorgio Tozzi. Last week the Met announced that it has taken an option on a Sacco-Vanzetti...