I thought long and hard before raising this topic again, as the last
thing I want to do is to provide ammunition to Lanza's detractors on
YouTube (and elsewhere), but I feel it's a crucial issue that's been
largely swept under the carpet. I'm referring to the Jeff Rense-produced
CDs that Shawn mentioned in his first post on this thread.
Just to sum things up: in 2007, broadcaster
Jeff Rense
released three CDs of Lanza material, including commercial recordings
(released under the auspices of BMG) and one disc of live performances. The
sound restoration on these CDs was carried out by Oregon Sound Recording
under Rense's supervision. Several prominent Lanza aficionados,
including Derek Mannering, who wrote the liner notes, and Lindsay
Perigo, subsequently praised the sound quality on these CDs in the
highest possible terms.
Well, the sound quality is excellent, all
right, but the sonic trickery that has been performed on these CDs is
unforgivable. Virtually every track has been manipulated in some way --
different takes spliced together by Rense's engineers, as on the Coke
"You'll Never Walk Alone," or endings altered (as on "Roses of Picardy")
-- with the worst of the tampering involving the lengthening of many of
Lanza's high notes.
Here are some examples:
On the 1948
Nessun Dorma: the high B on the second syllable of "vincero" has been
lengthened by several seconds.
On the 1948
Lamento di Federico: again, the high B has been lengthened -- in this
case by at least a couple of seconds.
The 1948
La Donna 'e Mobile: the high B on "pensier" has been lengthened by
approximately two seconds.
You Do Something To Me: the second-to-last note has been extended by
several seconds.
There are numerous other examples, including the Hollywood Bowl
Improvviso, as mentioned by Shawn at the beginning of this thread.
But why drag this sorry matter up again? you might ask. After all, we went into it in some detail three years ago on
this thread (from the 11th post onwards).
Well,
there are at least two compelling reasons. First, despite the efforts
of some valiant souls, including our own Vince di Placido, to raise the
matter on Rense's forum, the majority of people who are aware of the
issue either didn't care about the tampering, or fail to see why
altering Lanza's singing
on his recordings to make it more exciting is wrong in itself! "But
the sound is so good" has been the usual response. Rense himself has
denied any deliberate lengthening of notes, despite some pointed
questioning from Vince, though he has acknowledged splicing different
takes of You'll Never Walk Alone together -- defending the end result as
being "better Lanza."
To my dismay, I discovered today that
even the Lanza Institute is actively promoting two of these discs on its
website, praising Rense for having given "
many of the older archival recordings . . . new life...". When even the admirable Mario Lanza Institute has given its (unwitting?) blessing to doctored recordings, then surely it's time to speak up.
The
second issue is that Rense is now working on a new Lanza compilation,
this time (as I understand it) focusing on soundtrack recordings. It
goes without saying that I'm concerned that, once again, high notes will
mysteriously become longer and other audio witchcraft committed. In fact, there was an ominous hint of this a few months
back when Rense posted on his forum that the
Because You're Mine "Lord's Prayer," as featured on the 1998
Rhino CD,
was running exceptionally slow -- and that he was shocked that no one
had ever commented on this. Well, as I pointed out to Rense at the time,
that's because it's
not running slow in the slightest! Rense
didn't agree, and I now have the uncomfortable feeling that this recording, which I gather is planned
for the new CD, will be "corrected" in due course.
I certainly hope I'm
wrong. By all means, improve the sound quality on Lanza's recordings (and God knows some of the 1959 material is crying out for proper restoration), but tampering with the man's singing is just plain wrong for so many reasons.