La Traviata: "The tale of a cutie with a cough and no four-way pills."
Lucia di Lammermoor: "Her brother done her dirt, and she went nuts on E flat above high C."
Samson and Delilah: "Moral: never let a dancing girl get in your hair."
With such thumbnail plot summaries, a 56-year-old disc jockey named Reuben Bradford is selling opera to Texans. On Dallas' station WFAA, his Opera Once Over Lightly is beamed directly at "the taxi-driver who likes Figaro, but doesn't know why."
Son of a railway worker and great-grandson of a Methodist bishop, Bradford picked up his Runyonesque jargon as a carnival piano...