An old joke I heard during my brief time in the opera business went something like this: There are four types of tenors: leggiero, lyric, spinto, and heldentenor. The leggiero tenor has no balls. The lyric tenor has one ball. The spinto tenor has two balls. And the heldentenor has two balls, and he’s standing on one of them. The joke might be funny only to opera goers, especially those who attend the Bayreuth Festival. But allow me to add that the recently-departed Canadian heldentenor Jon Vickers had three or four balls and never needed to stand on any of them. (As you might guess, I’m a fan of that late, great singer.) In any event, balls bring us to Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the U.K. Some might think it rude to say that the “Iron Lady” had more balls than the men of her day leading other European nations -- rude, that is, to Lady Thatcher, who was every inch a woman. However, it could be said that compared to some of her male...(Read Full Article)