Great Lanza recordings that I didn't initially love (or appreciate)

[Derek McGovern]

I thought it'd be interesting to discuss those Lanza recordings that took their merry time for us to like, love or appreciate. In other words, recordings that grew on us.  

For me, the list is quite a long one! 

I think I'll start with "Long Ago and Far Away," a beautiful interpretation of a great song by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin that initially did nothing for me. I first heard it on the 10" Songs of Romance LP when I was a teenager, and simply didn't care for some of the sounds that Lanza was making on this recording---the harshness of his uncovered "and" ("Just one look and then I knew"), for example, and other rough spots. (Lindsay Perigo was even more dismissive of this recording in those days, rating it "unplayable" :)) And I didn't fully appreciate the beauty of the song itself.    

I don't think I listened to "Long Ago" again until it appeared on the 1998 CD When Day Is Done. Hearing it in much better sound (the original LP, with its dull, flat sound, had accentuated the vocal blemishes) helped me to appreciate very quickly that, really, this is a magically phrased piece of singing (with memorable lyrics), and possessing an atmosphere all its own. Yes, I still think it's a little rough in a couple of places, but what the hell---its virtues far outweigh its flaws. In fact, it's now one of the Lanza love songs I most often listen to!

Good sound quality does make a difference, doesn't it? I've often said that if some of the critics of the (mostly) poorly recorded Caruso Favorites album (or of Lanza's later voice, in general) were to hear those late albums in the same glorious sound quality as heard, say, on the Cavalcade of Show Tunes or the RCA "Song Angels Sing," they'd probably have a much more glowing assessment of Lanza's singing.

So what are your "late bloomers"? :)

[Vincent Di Placido]

Actually Derek, you mentioned one of my top "Late Bloomers", "The Song Angels Sing"

 

I didn't really like that song when I first heard it on a British album in the 1980's that was put together by requests from the BMLS ( I can't remember the title of the album, possibly "With a Song in My Heat"?) if I remember correctly it featured more obsure songs that hadn't been featured as much as other tracks & it actually introduced me to some tracks that weren't in my father's record collection anymore (people didn't return borrowed lps, our priest was the worst for doing it!)

I loved it, this was the first time I heard beautiful things like, "If I Loved You" & "Behold!", my father was so nostalgic when he discovered this collection as some of these recordings he hadn't heard in years.

Anyway, I just didn't care for "The Song Angels Sing" back then & it was more to do with the song & choir, it all sounded contrived & forced, not Mario's singing but the actual songwriting & arrangement.

BUT over the last few years as it has been discussed here & you have expressed your fondness for it, I go to it & here something else now, Mario is in such great voice & SO expressive, even for him, that it is now a firm favourite. It has quite a few of those Mario spine tingling moments when he phrases so expressively & so intensely that you feel those shivers, "The wind in the lace" is just stunningly tender & the smoulder as he seductively ties "This is our night, I love you so." into  "Lift my heart to skies on the wings of a dream." pure Mario Magic.

By the way I have always loved how Mario accentuates the word "Kiss" in songs, this will sound silly but it has made it my favourite word. On the tv Show "Inside the Actors Studio" & they ask what is your favourite word, in my head I hear Mario singing "Kiss" :-)

[Vincent Di Placido]

Oh! & I have ALWAYS loved "Long Ago & Far Away", great song sung Beautifully!

 

 

...correction in my previous post I "HEAR" not "HERE" - stupid brain :-(

[Barnabas Nemeth]

In my case the "Trees" was the similar song. Regardless the lyrics, I love the melody, the way of singing, the intonation, the smoothness.

Barnabas 

2012/11/22 Vincent Di Placido <vincent....@gmail.com>

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Vince: Great post! (And at least your errant priest had good taste in singers!)

I still wish the RCA version of "The Song Angels Sing" was bereft of that ghastly choir of angels. It dates the song terribly, which is a real shame since Mario is in preternaturally beautiful voice here (soft and full voice too). Mind you, I feel much the same about the male choir that intrudes on the MGM Student Prince "Serenade" ("Only closer/tonight we love"). They're far too forward on the otherwise excellent RCA mix, and should have been in the background---way, way back---as they are on the actual film soundtrack, or better still, banished. Be gone, irritants! :) 

I remember that LP, and, yes, the title was With a Song in My Heart. A bit of a mixed bag, I recall, including the title track [says Derek, ducking for cover from Mike], and with a poorly chosen cover, but it was good to have the likes of "Song Angels Sing" on an LP at last. (I'd previously only had that recording on an ancient 45rpm.) RCA actually held a competition for the album: people were invited to send in their compilation choices. Naturally, I included the kinds of titles that would have made a certain BMG compiler wince at my emphasis on the serious side of Lanza: "Amor Ti Vieta," the Otello Monologue, songs from the Mario! album, etc. It then transpired that what RCA really wanted was to award a prize to the person who came up with the compilation that most closely resembled what they had already chosen. With recordings like the unfortunate "Charmaine" on that LP, I really didn't stand a chance :) 

Another Lanza recording that I didn't initially care for, believe it or not, was "All the Things You Are" from the Cavalcade album. It was a very slow courtship, but I'm now very fond of the recording (even if it's been eclipsed by the extraordinary MGM version, which we finally got to hear around the mid-1990s). Mario's in stirring form! I'm still not 100% sold on the Cavalcade arrangement of the song, though---it really could have been better structured---and, as I'm sure I've said before, I wish the seldom-heard intro had been included ("Time and again/I've longed for adventure..."). We only hear its melody in the closing chords of the MGM version :(

Cheers

Derek

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Barnabas: Did you mean that you didn't like Lanza's version of "Trees" when you first heard it? And because of its lyrics? 

I was enchanted with Lanza's handling of the song when I first heard it as a 15-year-old (more than anything else, it was the brilliant sound of his rich, ripe voice that I was responding to here), but it wasn't long after that that Lindsay Perigo, who was then President of the local Mario Lanza Society in New Zealand, pointed out all the flaws in the recording. "He would never have won a singing competition singing like that," he started off by saying :) I had to concede it wasn't as evenly sung as it could have been, and little by little I lost my enthusiasm for it. But there's no denying Mario's complete involvement with the song.  

Cheers

Derek   

[Michael McAdam]

Hey Vince. Nice to see you back.

Yes, the LP put out by British RCA (Cat. No. RL43731) in 1981 at the behest of the BMLS was entitled With A Song In My Heart [they actually re-titled and changed the predicate noun to "heart" from your "heat" below, Vince as they didn't want to all and sundry to know you were singing on your honeymoon? ;-)) ]

Your take on the syrupy choir I agree with totally. If Mario's singing wasn't so ...what? exqusite? the number would have been in my 'delete' list. As it was, it came to be the 2nd selection on my Macadamedia Romance CD.

Long Ago & Far Away also a fave from the outset, Derek. 

Mike

[Armando]

Ciao Derek: Can’t really help you with this particular thread. The reason, believe it or not, is that the songs I love I’ve always loved and ditto for the ones I can’t stand. Among the former are ‘Long Ago and Far Away”-far away memories, indeed, of first hearing it as a young boy in a cinema in Venice –the film was Cover Girl.  Mario is in great voice and the way he caresses each phrase is sheer magic. As for “The Song Angels Sing, ” love the melody (based on Brahms) and the singing for the same reasons that Vince pointed out.

But there are numerous songs that I don’t like, no matter who sings them. Here are some examples: Marcheta, Trees, My Buddy, Charmaine, Diane ,Santa Lucia and, of course, the ghastly Pineapple Pickers.  

[leeann]

I've been surprised to find out how much I appreciate and actually like "Tell me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky." I didn't when I first heard it (or second or third and more heard it). The lyrics were off-putting, regardless of Lanza's interpretation. It seemed both melodramatic and stilted. Insights from forum discussions including this thread comparing Lanza's version with that of Leonard Warren helped me really like the song--but still, in the back of my mind, it seemed melodramatic and lyrically stilted.

And then it didn't. I'm not sure what happened during time and distance away from listening to it  that brought the change, but now this song moves me. Not perhaps in the same way as the songs cited above--all of which I've loved from the beginning.

The lyrics are spare,  Lanza's delivery in both the 1952 and 1958 versions (even though they're different), the simplicity of the accompaniment seem to take what might be considered a period piece and let it speak across time. Best, Lee ann

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: Thanks for reminding us about the "Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky" thread. It's a goodie! I've just been re-reading the comments on the Ayn Rand forum discussion that Susan linked to at the beginning of that thread, and I was struck by this observation:

Indeed I am familiar with Mr. Lanza's earlier, [1952] home recording of the song and agree that it's even more "over the top" than the [1958] performance I linked to above.  It's also proof positive that Mr. Lanza's interpolation of that climactic high note was not a spontaneous, in-the-moment vocal gesture that night in 1958 but, rather, had been integral to his view of the song from the start.  What is interesting about that 1958 performance is that it sounds spontaneous . . . as though Mr. Lanza simply had to sing it that way, so caught up is he in the emotional impetus of the song.      

The writer makes an excellent point in his last sentence. Yes, the interpolated high note does sound spontaneous on the 1958 version---and the writer puts his finger on the inescapable emotional "truth" of Lanza's singing. Great stuff!

I'm curious to know if you have a favourite version of the song, Lee Ann :) I love them both for different reasons. On the 1952 version, Lanza's in terrific vocal form, uses a touch more light and shade, and is more accurate intonation-wise at the beginning of the song, than in 1958. But while I definitely prefer the beginning of the 1952 rendition ("Summer has gone/the leaves are falling..."), and I love its exquisite ending, I feel the 1958 version---overall---is the more heartrending of the two. 

I think the song grew on me as well. I certainly never disliked it when I first heard it (along with most of Lanza's other recordings) in my mid-teens, but I remember being struck by how different it was from the kind of song I associated with Lanza. And it irritated me that the audience at the Royal Albert Hall seemed only lukewarm in their reaction to it, especially compared with their response to some of the lesser renditions that evening! 

Other "growers"? The 1958 "Fenesta che Lucive"---surprisingly enough. I think I was simply too young to appreciate Lanza's complete identification with its grief-stricken lyrics when I first heard it (not that I actually understood the words at the time). In fact, it was probably my least favourite recording on the Mario! album---Funiculi' Funicula' excepted, of course :)---for a few years. (My early favourite tracks were Voce 'e Notte, Santa Lucia Luntana, and Passione.) I now regard it as a masterpiece of interpretation---and pity those who dismiss it as being a soporific failure. (How did one Lanza biographer describe it on the Rense forum? "If Lanza sang it any more slowly, he'd be asleep." What utter rubbish!)    

Cheers

Derek 

  

[Michael McAdam]

Lee Ann, Derek,

Uncanny that you both echoed my own sentiments here. Ergo....a song I wouldn't normally have associated with Mario. The way the lyrics sounded a bit stilted and yes, melodramatic; over the top.

I initially thought it sounded like a serious voice exercise or warm-up song.

But, even tho' it was never on my frequent-play group of songs, there was something compelling about it. Methinks Mario's impassioned (as always) delivery had a lot do do with it?

Cheers, Mike

On Friday, November 23, 2012 1:52:22 AM UTC-4, leeann wrote:

Lee Ann's comments: I've been surprised to find out how much I appreciate and actually like "Tell me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky." I didn't when I first heard it (or second or third and more heard it). The lyrics were off-putting, regardless of Lanza's interpretation. It seemed both melodramatic and stilted. . Best, Lee ann

Derek's comments:  But while I definitely prefer the beginning of the 1952 rendition ("Summer has gone/the leaves are falling..."), and I love its exquisite ending, I feel the 1958 version---overall---is the more heartrending of the two. 

[leeann]

Mike, that was my first thought too--wondering if it were more of an exercise piece. I wouldn't claim any kind of expertise about Vittorio Giannini--except that I was surprised to find out that he really was more contemporary than I would've guessed, in fact, rather prominent in the twentieth century--more as a teacher, but one who did some unexpected work  (easily searchable online).  But anyway, apparently "Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky" was actually start of a long collaboration with poet lyricist Karl Flaster in 1927.

Derek asked which I preferred, the 1952 or the 1958 version. Sigh. I'm not good at that kind of choice. The answer is "both." I would've been absolutely thrilled to hear the 1958 version live in Albert Hall, though, and there's been a great deal of discussion about challenges of concert work there: acoustics,  time lag between stage and audience, and more.  I imagine that in person, with this song, Lanza's compensation for those elements was breathtaking. Of course, there are a lot of reasons for attending a live concert--it's exciting, I think, when the performer gives the audience something different, something that departs from a familiar interpretation--and I think that's what Lanza does here, just as he did in that same concert with "Lamento di Federico." But then, both of Lanza's versions of this seem to depart from the more technically subdued styles of others who have recorded this work. The miracle to me is that he does it so well without going over the top--even at Albert Hall. (Arguable, I'm sure!)

This seems to be another song, too, that epitomizes Lanza's gift for taking unusual pieces, lifting them out of the Canon and making them his own with extraordinary artistry. Best, Lee Ann

[leeann]

P.S.  Flaster's son co-wrote an article about the collaboration between Giannini and Flaster and among the things they had to say about "Tell me, oh blue, blue Sky":  "...a free intermingling of recitative and arioso that combine dramatically to project the text."  And speaking of its "emotional intensity," they wrote, "It is a short masterpiece and a strenuous test for the singer. Nothing is wasted. The text and music truly complement each other."  That certainly makes more sense now than the first time I heard it!

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: I remember being surprised too when I realized that Giannini was far more contemporary than his music suggested---even outliving Lanza by seven years. He even looked different from what I'd imagined too (quite approachable!):

   




It's interesting to read that on Wikipedia that he was (apparently) held in little regard by modernists, and that "Tell Me" was also one of his earliest songs. Again, if Wikipedia is to be believed, as his style developed, "it grew in darkness, intensity, and tonal adventurousness, exploring dissonance without succumbing to modernism." Hmm. Some of those later compositions might be worth checking out! And if intensity was something Giannini valued, then he might well have appreciated Lanza's interpretations---despite their artistic licence :)

Cheers

Derek

[Derek McGovern]

I thought I'd revive this thread for anyone who might like to chime in with examples of Lanza recordings that they didn't initially appreciate, but came to like or love.

In my case, I disliked virtually the entire 1959 Student Prince album when I first heard it as a teenager. I later came to appreciate about two-thirds of its tracks---and I love "Thoughts Will Come to Me"---but as a 15-year-old I couldn't get past that raspy or harsh quality in his voice at times. 

Cheers,

Derek

[leeann]

I revisited the Serenade/Cavalcade album this week after comments about more representative choices for last Sunday's Henry Fogel program on Lanza.

Given the glorious singing on that CD, it seems awfully nit-picky to point to "pieces I didn't initially appreciate" especially because I'm still not quite sure I do now.

"Serenade" is one of those, though. I'm not sure what it is--or isn't--what it is that doesn't quite work for me in that number. It's not the echo-ey bit at the end. It's certainly not the voice. I don't think it's the interpretation.

Which may just leave the song itself. It's strong; it's suited as the powerful theme song to a dramatic movie.

But maybe it's just  not what I expect a serenade to be. Perhaps there's the expectation of something that's musically more nuanced, more intimate. In any event, there's a disconnect of some sort that leaves me concentrating on the voice, independently of the song itself.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: It's interesting that Lanza himself wasn't keen on the song "Serenade" from Serenade. I wonder what he thought of the rejected earlier version of the song?

I can understand why Cahn and Brodszky were asked to come up with a substitute "Serenade." The completely different earlier version provides a great opportunity for thrilling vocalism (and Lanza certainly delivers, especially on the ending of the alternate take featured on the CD Serenade/A Cavalcade of Show Tunes), but the melody isn't particularly memorable. And that was presumably why Warners discarded the song. They needed a strong celebratory musical motif (let's call it "Juana's theme" :)) to serve as the counterpart to the emotional turmoil of "My Destiny" ("Kendall Hale's theme"). 

Mine is probably a minority opinion, but I feel that "Serenade" serves its purpose reasonably well in the film. No, it's not a great song---surprisingly, really, given the quality of some of Brodszky's earlier compositions for Lanza---but at least its melody does linger in the memory (especially the music that accompanies the lines "Serenade/Our love is a serenade"). The only problem for me is that the version Lanza sings at the end of the film---and the one that you discuss in your post---is not up to snuff. He's forcing his voice on the high C at the end, and the first half is roughly sung (although in the context of the film, it's meant to be sung that way). The other take, sung in Mexico in the film, is so much better---with Lanza in beautiful voice and delivering some gorgeous phrasing:    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIzpckm17KY

RCA was crazy not to have released this version of the song!

Incidentally, Lanza recorded quite a number of takes of "Serenade"; I wonder if these discarded efforts are still in the vaults? I think it's telling that the version they did release was recorded on the same day as both takes of "Nessun dorma"---a day when Lanza was clearly not at the top of his game vocally. (That didn't stop the recording from charting in the UK, though!)  

Cheers,

Derek 

[Barnabas Nemeth]

Well, likely I still have to listen to this song several times because this not my favourite song at all. Might be my fault. Barnabas