6 June—Majority Democrats and even a good number of minority Republicans in Connecticut’s problematic House of Representatives have just passed the 832-page typically sick joke of a biennial budget. Without bothering to read most of the implementer for obvious reasons and as usual. Most of ‘em just do as they’re told. The Senate will follow suit.

The good news is, there’s a little groundhog digging a few feet away from the office window and today’s disquisition is an earworm.

Josef Locke was an Irish tenor, a.k.a. the Singing Bobby (he had served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary), who died in 1999 at 82. He’s perhaps best known for a song called “Hear My Song, Violetta,” which he recorded in 1947. It was taken pretty much word for word from the German hit “Hör’ mein Lied, Violetta,” a 1936 tango.

(Locke was played by Ned Beatty in a 1991 flick called “Hear My Song.”)

The tune is taken from the beginning of “Danza Piemontese” by Leone Sinigaglia and the ending of the prelude to act one of “La Traviata” by Giuseppi Verdi. Violetta is, of course, the titular fallen woman of Traviata, based on “La Dame aux camélias,” a play by Alexandre Dumas fils (Jr.), originally called “Violetta.” The play, not Dumas.

Everybody knows about Verdi, but what about Sinigaglia? He was a Piemontese (Northwest Italian) Jewish composer and mountaineer born in 1868. His two Piemontese dances are among his best-known works. His end came in 1944 when Nazis occupied Turin and he was to be sent to Germany as slave laborer but suffered a fatal heart attack as he was being arrested. All things considered, he was lucky.

Obnoxious, vicious digital forces are militating against my playing the sources of “Hear My Song, Violetta” for you, so the one rendition will have to suffice. For now, anyway . . .