If there is anything on this planet a chess player dreads more than a trapped queen, it's a kibitzer. When the chess players are Met Opera musicians, however- and the kibitzer is Luciano Pavarotti, who politely inquires if he may please play the winner- the request is difficult to refuse indeed.
The Franco Corelli who allegedly bit Birgit Nilsson on the neck during Turandot, and attacked a heckler in Naples during Il Trovatore, is definitely not the Corelli I knew. One