“It’s really quite tragic and quite poignant that someone who is this Italian-American who has portrayed his country in such an interesting way would die here (Italy).  It’s quite ironic really.”

–CNN correspondent, Barbie Nadeau, commenting on the death of actor James Gandolfini of the HBO hit “The Sopranos,” on CNN International, 6/21/2013.

Gandolfini is almost universally recognized as having changed television with his “sympathetic” and “vulnerable” portrayal of fictional Italian-American gangster Tony Soprano.