Miscellaneous Lanza-related comments (June-September 2014)

[Derek McGovern]

Time for a new "Miscellaneous" Lanza thread. As always, please use this discussion for any general comments about Mario Lanza that you feel don't warrant their own separate thread.  

[Derek McGovern]

I was baffled to find the New York Times quoting from David Bret's appalling Lanza biography today in an obituary for Terry Robinson:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/nyregion/terry-robinson-chiropractor-and-fitness-trainer-to-the-stars-dies-at-98.html 

What on earth was obit writer Paul Vitello thinking?! Surely a journalist for the New York Times can recognize a trash biography when s/he sees one? The day when Bret can be used as a reliable source is the same day that aliens will return Elvis Presley to Earth :) 

[Tony Partington]

Hi Derek!  Very sad to read of Terry Robinson's passing and I couldn't agree with you more.  What in God's name is Paul Vitiello using that piece of garbage David Brett's biography to draw from!!!  Good grief, he could have used a quote from Terry's own book if he needed a quote!  Anyway, upon reading the obit, I was reminded of the one time I met Terry Robinson and the very nice conversation we had.  It was on November 1, 1987.  I was living in Philly at the time and he was in town for the Mario Lanza Ball.  Someone, I believe it was Derek Mannering, took a photo of us and sent it to me.  I remember Terry as being a very down to earth nice fellow.  That was also when I met Ellisa Lanza Bregman and her husband - also very nice folks.  She was fascinated that I had worked with Constantine Callinicos and had many questions about him.  Really rather funny actually, her asking me things about her father and his work with Costa.  In all events, here's the photo I spoke of.  All the best - Tony

[leeann]

If this were a Fellini or Pasolini or Rossellini  film, there'd be layers and layers of meaning to peel back to find the significance of of using the worst sensationalist so-called biographer of Mario Lanza to eulogize another sensationalist biographer of same.

But it's not.

It's the New York Times.

Jeez, even in our age of instant journalism, that's just sloppy. And dumb.

At least the quote was innocuous.

PS.  So, that wasn't really Elvis I saw downtown last week? Whew.

[Derek McGovern]

I see that yet another Mario Lanza show is being performed in Australia---this time in Adelaide, and starring a 30-year-old operatic tenor/musical theatre performer named Blake Bowden. While I'm not familiar with Bowden's voice, I like his comments on Lanza:

“His voice was absolutely a gift from God. It made him a superstar in his day, and he had celebrity to burn, but alongside this there was a tragic side to him, a really sad story, and he died when he was only 38. That’s one of the reasons I wanted [co-performer and writer] Phil Scott to be involved: he can tell any story without making it too depressing! We’re calling it a heartfelt show with a smile or two.”
Many of Lanza’s greatest songs will be there.
“A lot of his stuff was for the stage and the screen, but he did have an operatic side to him as well, and we’ll be looking at all of that. I’ve come to think of him as one of the first crossover artists!

[Derek McGovern]

A coincidence (and a piece of utter trivia!) that I can't resist sharing:

We've been discussing the 1950 RCA recording of "Questa o quella" on another thread recently, and that prompted me to dig out my Seven Hills of Rome DVD to compare Lanza's version of the aria in that film. 

While watching the rendition, I noticed yet again that at the beginning of the final line, "Se mi punge una qualche beltà" (If I fancy a beautiful girl), a piece of paper falls off the stage curtain on our left. I had always wondered what the point of that distraction was---or whether it was unintended and (given the technical sloppiness of the film) had perhaps gone unnoticed by the editor and director.

Lo and behold, I discovered today that, yes, it was unintended---but that director Roy Rowland opted to retain it in the release print. According to this newspaper article, it was Lanza's high note that made the paper fall off the curtain---though Rowland presumably meant the pre-recorded vocal. I doubt that Lanza was singing in full voice along with his recording when they filmed the scene (but you never know!):  

You can watch the scene here in this terribly thin-sounding (and sped-up) clip from a dubbed Spanish TV broadcast of the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7D2YkgzlwY [The paper falls off at the 2:14 mark]

And the rest of the Seven Hills article can be read here. 

[Tony Partington]

Fun stuff Derek.  Thanks!

Tony Partington

[Barnabas Nemeth]

Interesting. By all means, for me, the 1950 Lanza version is unbeatable, memorable, very special. Both the voice and the reading are fantastic. However, the movie version of "Seven Hills of Rome" is by far the least favourable one....Barnabas

[Derek McGovern]

In light of our current (and recurring!) discussion on the need for an outstanding Lanza operatic compilation, I thought I'd remind everyone of Vince's excellent post on an earlier "Miscellaneous Lanza" thread last September:

It took me many years, since I was a child in fact, to understand & realise exactly what kind of vocal animal Mario was. Some people still don't understand.  

Mario Lanza's strength, & it also turned out to be a weakness, was that he was an exceptionally gifted operatic tenor who could when he wanted move into popular song territory convincingly, not to the extent of a popular song stylist like Sinatra, but enough that when he was on form,understood the material & how he was going to approach it intelligently he could sound perfectly at home in the Great American Songbook. This does not mean as you rightly say, Derek, that he should be repeatedly portrayed almost in the opposite way, which is how the majority of the BMG/Sony cds would have the buyers believe. You woulkd almost take from these cds that Mario was a popular singer who happened to push himself occasionally & dabble in recording the odd aria, this is not how I, as a genuine Lanza fan, would like Mario portrayed.

Derek, your suggested Operatic cd tracklisting is actually a Playlist on my iPod, along with a few Hollywood Bowl recordings, it is a perfect well thought out collection of Mario Lanza quality, I really hope it happens someday...

You say, Derek, "Just think: Lanza compilations featuring no dud recordings. What a concept!" Oh! How I second that.

When I was a naive young Mario fan I would have jumped at hearing those unreleased Coke recordings but I cringe now that they are being smuggled in on mainstream high profile collections that are supoposed to be representative of Mario Lanza as an artist. This is ridiculous! Those few months of Coke recordings of one-off performances of sometimes-badly chosen material should not be the main focus on these now precious & rare releases. Let's have Mario shown in the best light!

   [From https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mariolanza/oUTS9we8TeA/Q2bQQiTyL_MJ]

Vince's acknowledgement in this post that it took him "many years . . . to understand & realise exactly what kind of vocal animal Mario was" resonated strongly with me. I think he summed up in a nutshell how even those who consider themselves Lanza devotees can undervalue the extent of the man's achievements. Far too many fans see him as primarily a Great American Songbook specialist rather than the operatic tenor that he actually was. A major reason for that, I feel, is that many Lanza admirers care little for opera (or, for that matter, "serious" music]. That's their prerogative, of course, but it saddens me nonetheless---just as it also depresses me that so many of his admirers care little for anything he recorded after 1953. Lindsay Perigo touched on the latter point on a recent program with Jeff Rense when he attempted to convince his host that Lanza did make some wonderful recordings during the latter part of his career. Mr. Rense was unmoved by one of the examples that Lindsay chose---the beautifully rendered "Vaghissima Sembianza"---but kudos to the latter for arguing the case for one of Lanza's late recordings. 

As Vince says in his post, "Some people still don't understand [what kind of vocal animal Mario was]." 

[Derek McGovern]

I was surprised and delighted to receive a message from Rodolfo Pili's grandson just the other day via our Contact Us page on Mario Lanza, Tenor. Pili (1891-1957), whose mini-biography can be read in our Lanza Musical Who's Who here, was an Italian tenor of some repute who later settled in South Philadelphia and created the Apollo Grand Opera Company. While in his late teens, Lanza joined Pili's company, and performed in a number of operas under his direction, including the rarely heard Crispino e la comare.

Interestingly, both of Pili's daughters are still alive---and Pili's grandson Joseph has promised to quiz them about any details they can recall of Lanza's performances, as well as searching for any Lanza-related memorabilia in his grandfather's collection. 

I'll keep you posted of any developments! In the meantime, I can only imagine who might contact us next :) 

[leeann]

A sort of quickie review of  Australia's Phil Scott and Blake Bowden's show on Lanza that you mentioned above suggests a pretty interesting approach to Lanza's music and life--sort of montage of scenes and events--music within a context (despite revisiting conspiracy theories about his death) as well as music that represents the breadth of Lanza's repertoire.

Lanza’s life is presented as brief snapshots of moments in time with some minimal costume changes. Blake Bowden is handsome and charming as Mario Lanza while Phil Scott deftly plays many characters in Lanza’s life, regularly injecting some delightful humour along the way. Scott manages some very quick character and costume changes with an apparent ease, matched only by the smooth finesse of the technical crew.

Assuming that Bowden doesn't always use the "crooning voice" the reviewer cites, it's kind of nice to read "...this cabaret is about the legend and his music and, with Phil Scott’s skilful piano playing and the beautifully crooning voice of Blake Bowden, Mario is an enjoyable and educational journey through the life of one of the greatest tenors of all time."

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: Thanks for the update! I'd been wondering about that Lanza show---though I must admit to some skepticism after learning that the ridiculous Mafia business would be included. Let's hope the show really did emphasize Lanza's art rather than pure myths about the man.

I see, by the way, that an interview with Blake Bowden has just appeared on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVXL2frh9LI

Cheers,

Derek

[Derek McGovern]

Back in September 2013 we were discussing the TCM double-CD Mario Lanza: The Toast of Hollywood, a mixed bag that Armando wittily described as "more than a bit burnt around the edges."  

Just today I came across a review of this set in the March-April 2014 edition of American Record Guide. This must rate as one of the more peculiar reviews of a Lanza CD release that I've read! With a few exceptions---e.g. deservedly positive comments about the 1949 "Che gelida manina," the 1952 Student Prince "Serenade," and "They Didn't Believe Me"---reviewer Richard Sininger singles out the least impressive moments for praise while uttering absolute nonsense about some of the album's best tracks ("If I Loved You," "Be My Love"). 

Lanza allows his "voice to turn hard"? Sloppy technique on "Be My Love"?! "A bleating sound"?!!! A singer with mere "good qualities"??

He also claims that "The Loveliest Night of the Year" is not sung in an operatic style (did he not listen to the reprise?!) and criticizes the song choices on the "much less enjoyable" Disc 2, when, more often than not, it's the singing that's the problem. And as for choosing the Coke "I Love Thee" as a highlight, well, words fail me....

  

Mario Lanza: Toast of Hollywood
Ray Sinatra, Constantine Callinicos conducting
Sony 74163 [2CD] 95 minutes

Mario Lanza made fewer than ten movies, he sang in only one complete professional opera production, and he died at the age of 38 over 50 years ago. Yet such is the power of Hollywood that his name may be all some people
know about opera. This recording includes 33 numbers. The first disc contains four operatic arias and songs from his movies; the second, mostly songs recorded for his radio show. Lanza’s voice is sounds classically trained
but was used mostly in more popular music. He obviously knew how to sing, but he allowed many bad habits to creep into his work, causing the technique to suffer. In his famous ‘Be My Love’, perhaps the number most associated
with him, he scoops up to the high notes—a sound that many people associate with opera singers but one that defines for me a sloppy technique or a tasteless attention-getter. In ‘La Donna e Mobile’ he certainly sings the notes,
and the high notes are generally rich and clear, but in the final run leading up to the high note his singing is very sloppy. In many places he allows the voice to turn hard, producing what I would describe as a bleating sound. Here the
sound seems constricted, as if the singer’s throat tightened.

On the other hand, there is some fine singing. In Rodolfo’s aria from La Boheme, Lanza shows off his fine top voice. In two pop songs, ‘The Loveliest Night of the Year’ and ‘They Didn’t Believe Me’, he sings in a lovely, simple, non-operatic style; here he emphasizes the meaning of the song, rather than showing off his voice. Other high points include a mostly very beautiful ‘Serenade’ from The Student Prince and the Gounod ‘Ave Maria’. In all his singing, his diction is excellent; the listener can understand every word.

The second disc is much less enjoyable, mostly because many of the songs are not of the same quality. The best numbers are ‘The Best Things in Life Are Free’ sung simply and ‘I Love Thee’ by Grieg. Some of the songs are
sung too operatically, and in some the voice again sounds metallic and constricted. In ‘If I Loved You’ from Carousel, Lanza’s singing made me want to pull out my old original cast album to hear the great John Raitt’s definitive
performance.

This recording will satisfy people who love Lanza’s voice. For me it is an interesting study of a voice with good qualities but too many bad habits. A small booklet is included.

[Derek McGovern]

Another article that I found today---and which I hadn't read before---is this 1999 syndicated piece from the Washington Post by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Tim Page:

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/jun/29/entertainment/ca-51103 (Be sure to click on page 2 at the bottom)

I would love to sit down with Mr. Page and discuss this article. It's well written, Page is obviously an intelligent fellow (and musical to boot), and he makes some astute observations. But what bothers me about the article is the way its author has clearly accepted all of Bessette's allegations (in the latter's then recently published book). These range from laughable assertions that Lanza was incapable of learning [among others, Page should have spoken to vocal coach Leila Edwards, who taught Lanza the role of Pinkerton] to claims that the man was a monstrous egomaniac:

Lanza is rarely taken seriously by classical music aficionados. You will search in vain for his name in most of the critical histories of recorded opera, although he recorded many of the best-known arias. He is often dismissed as a vulgar bawler--or, at best, as a calculated creation of big money and bigger hype.

Still, other unquestionably important musicians held Lanza's gift in awe, among them conductors Serge Koussevitzky and Julius Rudel, and soprano Licia Albanese, who recorded with such legendary tenors as Beniamino Gigli and once said Lanza had "a greater voice than Caruso."

Lanza himself had no doubts that Albanese's assessment was correct. "Caruso?" he once said. "You study that ridiculous legend? That guy could not even whistle properly." 

This last quote may provide a clue to the reason Lanza's star imploded when it should have been forever established in the firmament. Lanza could be a lazy, strutting, arrogant and undisciplined jerk. He had an insatiable appetite for food, liquor and women, all of which he abused with shocking insensibility. He could barely read music, and refused to learn. He would balloon up to 250 pounds in the middle of making a film, sometimes delaying production by months. Bessette acknowledges that Lanza is "a strong contender for the title of the most truculent, morose, demanding star in the history of Hollywood." 

I also suspect that as well as swallowing Bessette's portrayal of Lanza hook, line, and sinker, Page hasn't delved that deeply into the tenor's discography. If he had, then he surely wouldn't have made this generalization:

"[Lanza] often displayed a tendency to sob and shout, as if to overwhelm the listener even when nothing of the sort was called for." 

Someone should send him the highlights from Serenade, For the First Time, Mario! and Caruso Favorites, along with the CD of live & home material that accompanies Armando's book! Better still, he should read Armando's book :)

But Page redeems himself here:

"[W]hat we hear, again and again, throughout Lanza's films and recordings, is magnificent and tragically unfulfilled promise. The voice was an extraordinary one--immediately distinctive in its sound, full of sun and ardor, lyrical yet immensely powerful, all combined with what was, onstage, at least, an exuberant and winning personality. Lanza always seemed to sing directly from the heart, from one person directly to another--which has eluded many better-trained artists."

[Armando]

Richard Sininger doesn't know what he's talking about!

[leeann]

Richard Sininger is a high school English teacher who is credentialed, according to American Record Guide, because he has attended over 1600 performances of 300 operas. Period.  So, having read over 1600 books by over 300 authors, I guess I could start sending out applications to teach English. Good to know :)

[Armando]

Well said Lee Ann! Singling out ‘I Love Thee’ as one of the best numbers says it all about Sininger, regardless of his so called  “credentials”!

[leeann]

Excuse me if this is old news--I know many people who read this forum also subscribe to google alerts related to Mario Lanza; however, since these alerts seem to come at different times and with different content, it seemed worthwhile to post this.

Lucine Amara sang with a brief selection from Il Trovatore with Lanza in The Great Caruso, and as you can read in her brief biography in "A Mario Lanza Who's Who" on the website, mariolanzatenor.com, she also appears, if briefly, on-screen.

Amara has just received the first Daughters of Vartan (an Armenian service organization) Woman of the Year Award at the organization's annual national convention. The announcement in The Armenian Weekly praises her operatic career, cites The Great Caruso, and includes her photograph.  The article states:

"Widely considered one of the greatest sopranos of the 20th century, Amara is an American success story. Her name has become synonymous with the Metropolitan Opera...." 

And included among highlights of her career: "Amara appeared in the 1951 MGM film “The Great Caruso” with Mario Lanza and has made various recordings, including “Pagliacci” with Franco Corelli and Richard Tucker. Her credits are immense: She has performed in 33 opera houses and with 25 symphony orchestras throughout the United States."

Regrettably, as earlier threads on this forum indicate, she hasn't always done quite as much for Lanza's legacy as the film seems to have done for her own. Among contradictory statements, she did acknowledge, though, that: "His was the quality voice that we needed at the Met." and  "His singing gave me goosebumps." 

[norma]

Hi Derek,
Angela Lansbury is performing on stage in London at the moment.I wondered if she has ever commented on Mario as she sat next to him at the MGM 25th Anniversary party.He looks nervous at this time when he is just beginning his film career.Perhaps an E Mail might bear fruit.
Here's hoping
Norma

[Thelma F. Prince]

Who is Sininger  if I may ask?

[leeann]

Thelma, if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead and answer your question about Richard Sininger.

A few posts earlier, Derek talked about a review of the recently-released CD, The Toast of Hollywood.  Richard Sininger wrote a review of this CD in a publication called American Record Guide.

As you can see if you scroll back about 7 posts or click on  this URL: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mariolanza/NxRvkIKLU0A/reP0OaQNBUMJ, Sininger made some unusual comments in a rather poorly written article. He talks about Lanza's "bleating voice," that Lanza sings "too operatically."  His choice of favorite tracks was a little unusual too.

He doesn't seem very qualified to serve as a music critic, although he teaches an opera class to adult learners. Since his background is in English and, I believe, literature, perhaps he is more qualified to teach from the perspective of the libretto and opera's historic context than about singers and their art.  Lee Ann

[Thelma F. Prince]

Derek,
I especially enjoyed reading all the posts Derek has done and the
research he has done on the musicians, singers, operatic stars
associated with Lanza during his career and Derek has these articles
on this website. Those articles are very interesting and educational
for all Mario Lanza fans and perhaps even new fans of Mario.


Thank you, Leeann, I looked up Richard Sininger. I agree with you, he
does not know what he talks about.

Armando, "I Love Thee" was sung by my uncle at my wedding 61 years
ago. I will always love the song and it's composer! It is agreed
that Mario could have done better job with the song. The song itself
is a beautiful one.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Thelma: I'm very glad to hear that you've enjoyed reading our Mario Lanza Musical Who's Who. It's updated regularly, so you may want to revisit it from time to time.

You mentioned Mario's recording of "I Love Thee." Yes, it's a shame about both the Coke version and the RCA recording of this beautiful song. Both suffer from a rushed, almost manic approach, and in his excitement Mario's pitch falters. 

But he did record a much better version in 1958. This was for the soundtrack album For the First Time, although the version featured on the disc was not the rendition heard in the actual film. Here, Mario gives a beautifully controlled performance, which can be heard in very good sound on this brand-new page on our main site, along with the partial rendition that featured in the film: 

 

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/i-love-thee.html

(The recording I've used here is taken from the original 1959-released LP, so I'm not breaching copyright :))

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Derek

[leeann]

Just a very quick aside among all the great threads Derek's re-visited lately. 

I don't know whether New Orleans romance novel author Vincent B. "Chip" LoCoco is a good writer, but he clearly loves opera and his book Tempesta's Dream: a Novel of Love, Friendship and Opera has made Amazon's list of customer-rated top historical Italian fiction.

I also don't know whether he mentions Mario Lanza in his book, but he does on his facebook page, and it's maybe worth a peek because he links to Vince's beautiful "Passione" video on YouTube.  LoCocco writes,

The role Mario Lanza has played in bringing so many young people into a career in opera still continues to this day. The world of opera needs his like today. He was from a time when movies were made about opera and opera singers and when opera singers appeared on TV - actually singing opera arias. Gelb says the Met needs a younger audience. How do you attract a younger audience? Through movies. That is how so many people discovered opera - through Lanza movies. It opened the eyes of audience members to a world they knew very little about, but became interested enough to take a dip. Thanks Mario.

[Lou]

LoCocco and "the not always reliable" Innaurato (as Armando describes him in the Anna Moffo thread) agree on one thing: many people discovered opera through Lanza's movies. In a Pavarotti-bashing post on Opera-L, Innaurato credited Lanza with having reached more people than Pavarotti. Although he proceeded to damn Lanza with faint praise by saying that he "was the last to convert a small number of the unwashed to opera" (emphasis mine), I feel placated enough to forgive him for his disparaging post about Lanza on Opera-L, which Derek recently reproduced and later deleted (I wonder why) on the Myths About Lanza thread. 

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lou: You were wondering why I deleted my earlier message containing my response to Opera-L. I did so because that response never actually appeared there! I'd forwarded it to a member of Opera-L to post on my behalf (the same person who had alerted me to the disparaging comments about Lanza), but for whatever reason it didn't show up. 

So in the end, I went through the (always) long-winded process of rejoining Opera-L, and posted a different and longer response, which you can read below. I was planning to share it with this forum, but was waiting for a reply from Mr. Innaurato or any of the other Lanza skeptics on Opera-L first. As it happened, no one responded. So it seems they're happy to spread and even embellish cruel myths about Lanza, but are not willing to confront the possibility that they may be wrong.

I was particularly disappointed with Albert Innaurato, as I've long admired his intelligence and musical knowledge (not to mention his writing style). Ironically, he'd begun his post about Lanza by chiding the Opera-L members for regurgitating dubious second- and third-hand accounts about singers---before going on to do exactly the same thing himself!      

Anyway, here's my post of June 30 on Opera-L, followed by a couple of the posts that inspired it. I should add that while no one on Opera-L bothered to respond, the visitor stats to the Mario Lanza, Tenor pages mentioned in my post did go up suddenly after I'd posted :)   

Mario Lanza: A response to recent comments 

I think it's fair to say that when it comes to pervasive myths, Mario Lanza suffers more than most operatic singers. I also feel that much of the criticism of Lanza expressed on this forum has come from those with only a passing familiarity with both his recordings and his career. Lanza's an easy target because he never fulfilled his potential---and also made some woefully bad recordings---but there is far more to the man than either his poorly compiled CDs or the rumor mill would suggest.   

This post, by the way, is not addressed to any one person, though I was inspired to write it after reading the comments (below) of the usually reliable Mr. Innaurato.   

   

                                                                                            ********************************

I have interviewed conductors and singers who worked with Mario Lanza, spoken to people who heard him in both the opera house (New Orleans Municipal Auditorium, 1948) and in recital in Europe (1958). I've also listened to countless hours of interviews conducted by my friend Armando Cesari, author of Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy (Baskerville 2004), with such musical luminaries as Licia Albanese, Dorothy Kirsten, and George London, and conductors Franco Ferrara and Richard Bonynge. With the exception of Bonynge, who (along with Joan Sutherland) heard Lanza sing unamplified at the Royal Albert Hall, all of these people worked closely with Lanza between 1947 and 1958. In fact, London performed dozens of times with him, and Kirsten, as well as co-starring in The Great Caruso, sang in concert with him in 1948. 

All were adamant that whatever problems Lanza had with self-discipline (and, in the latter part of his life, with alcohol), the man was intelligent, vocally completely secure (Kirsten marveled that he could sing for hours without tiring), and possessed of an exceptional voice. There was no question that the voice projected superbly, and that it was the requisite size. Grace Bumbry, who heard him in 1958, described it to Joseph Calleja as a medium-sized "fully bloomed operatic voice of outstanding quality." Marilyn Horne, who as a teenager sang in the chorus when Lanza performed at the Hollywood Bowl, called him "the real thing." 

Lanza was also perfectly capable of learning and retaining operatic roles. He acquired a modest total of seven (eight if we include the Contino del Fiore, which he performed for the Apollo Grand Opera in Philadelphia in his late teens), and performed two of them. The reviews were excellent. (Opera News' Herbert Graf declared him "the find of the season" after his performance as Fenton at Tanglewood.) The well-regarded coach Leila Edwards, who taught him the role of Pinkerton in 1947-48, spoke admiringly of his retentive ear, and decades after his death expressed her frustration with those who claimed that the man and the voice were unsuited to the opera house. 

Rather than go any further, I urge anyone here who thinks that Lanza had a small voice, lacked intelligence or musicality (or indeed musicianship), always shouted, was murdered by the Mafia, or made his recordings in small pieces to read these two articles on my website:

Myths about Lanza the man

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/myths-about-the-man.html

Myths about Lanza the artist

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/myths-about-the-artist.html

There is also this handy article of quotes about him by various opera singers:

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/quotes-from-opera-singers.html

Plus a generous assortment of press reviews of his live performances:

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/concertsopera-1942-1950.html

And for anyone who's ever despaired at Lanza's wildly inconsistent singing on this LP or that CD, an analysis of his recorded legacy (and how to separate the wheat from the chaff):

http://www.mariolanzatenor.com/fixing-lanzas-recorded-legacy.html  

One last thing: Mr. Innaurato asks if there is any proof that Victor De Sabata went to Los Angeles in 1949 specifically to invite Lanza to open the La Scala season in the role of Chenier. Well, I can tell you that the source was MGM conductor/composer John Green. The straight-talking Green certainly had no reason to lie, and was candid about Lanza's strengths and failings. (Overall, he enjoyed working with him.) Green also noted in the same interview that Gaetano Merola of the San Francisco Opera had invited Lanza to perform Chenier in 1950 (alongside Albanese and Weede)---and that has been independently confirmed.  

Derek McGovern 

Mario Lanza's tenor voice was on the small side...according to all accounts...it would never have filled the "old Met"...is it true that he was actually "invited" to sing at the Met? Mario Lanza's only stab at an opera performance was back in 1948 ...he sang the role of Lt. Pinkerton in "Madama Butterfly" for the New Orleans Grand Opera and apparently realized that his voice was not meant for the operatic stage. 
Dan Kessler

And from Albert Innaurato:

I was told he had a beautiful timbre, that the mike loved, but never knew how to sing reliably. His voice fell back on his throat a lot, and he couldn't always manage high passages, it was said. It was, according to these people, a phenomenal gift that he didn't really care to develop. On the earlier records it is a wonderful sounding timbre, but the sound is rigged to provide a sense of size (I was told his tone carried because it was so arresting but that he didn't  really know how to project it with any certainty), and of course there were, it was said, a lot of takes and splicing to get a performance (I wasn't in the studio, of course, but suspect there is some truth to that).

He suffered from the curse of Italian-Americans from the lowest class, as I do, he couldn't control his weight, and although I don't think opera lovers were quite as concerned about fatties back then and I wouldn't say that --- even if money was short for a lot of people in that neighborhood --- skinniness was a notable quality if you took a walk. I did hear though that Mario tried a lot of crazy diets and a fair amount of speed to try to keep slim. There was a feeling he was hurting his voice by doing so. There was also the opinion that he was stupid. He certainly had a strong instinct for what he sang (as live records show) but learning accurately and remembering what he had learned were big problems.

Delores Wilson (who did have something of an international career and was in one of my plays when she had become a middling character actress) told me that Mario could be hard to hear but then open up and be impressive for a little while before his voice shrank again. She also said that the Mob was always around him and that he owed them and they got a lot of his money. It was said after he died that his death was a "hit". I wasn't there and don't know but they had a lot to do with certain aspects of show business at the time and had their own menu of recipes of remedies for problem people.


[...]

If you talk to those who have made significant careers they can all tell you about people they had known when they were young and studying who really had impressive sounds naturally (Sutherland and Nilsson were especially eloquent about this as was Fleming) and when those kids were in the mood even good ranges and high notes but didn't have the mind for professional singing, at least in opera. I think that was true of Lanza, although it was a remarkable gift.

Is there any proof that De Sabata WENT TO LA to try and persuade him to sing at La Scala? From what I've heard about that great conductor's personality and opinion of singers, I really have my doubts.

[leeann]

What a great response, Derek!  And how perfectly your articles respond to Innaurato's statements about Lanza.

Innauratos' comments are such a disappointment--sort of on par with Henry Fogel's recent program on Lanza. These guys need to hit the "refresh" icon, to clear the cache, so to speak.

Somehow, I just expect people who, theoretically, are knowledgeable and who know how to find and corroborate information to do just that--minimal fact-checking at least. Innaurato's was a series of personal statements, almost stream-of-consciousness, and what a waste. Thoughtless innuendo--a lot of gossip, a lot of "it was said." All quite easy to check out before writing.

Anyhow, as other reviews cited on this forum seem to indicate, many reputable writers on music, less entrenched in old myths, are putting forth updated and more accurate assessments of Lanza's voice and life. 

In fairness to Innaurato, though, I appreciated reading and learning from his post on Anna Moffo. Thanks for posting that link. And I kind of like the company of the "great unwashed" to whom Innaurato refers and Lou cites above. It's hard to read Mrs. John Claggart passively.

[Derek McGovern]

Belated thanks for your comments, Lee Ann.

I'm still disappointed that none of the people who saw fit to trash Lanza on the Opera-L forum have had either the courtesy or courage to respond to my comments. Too inconvenient? I was also disappointed on that forum by one Steve B., a knowledgeable opera lover who saw Lanza in recital in 1958---and whose fascinating comments on that performance have been mentioned here. As the only person on Opera-L (to the best of my knowledge) who actually heard Lanza in person, Steve could have easily put the doubters in their place. But instead he deemed it necessary to tone down his enthusiasm for Lanza. Rather than declare to the Opera-L groupies that Lanza's voice was "the most beautiful tenor voice I ever heard," as he has stated on more than one occasion elsewhere, Steve merely opined that the voice "had a peculiar beauty." 

"Peculiar"?! This is not some offbeat voice like that of Peter Pears :) Why do people feel they have to tailor their opinions to cater to snobs?! 

As for the others who continue to recycle the same old myths about Lanza in spite of evidence to the contrary, I'm convinced that some people are simply unable to revise their opinions and prejudices---especially once they reach a certain age. How many times have I pointed out on Opera-L that Lanza's performances as Pinkerton were not a failure, or reminded Henry Fogel that there is clear evidence, contrary to his assumptions, that Lanza was able to learn operatic roles? And still these myths are repeated, and by the same people. 

I'm reminded of my experience with Arthur Everard, then the classical music critic for the NZ Listener, a leading literary magazine in my country. Arthur, who was also the New Zealand film censor at the time, didn't much care for Lanza, although he did acknowledge (under his breath) that he liked his 1950 recording of "Questa o quella." Arthur (who was a nice guy) and I worked together at the New Zealand Film Unit, and one day I talked him into watching a string of operatic clips from Lanza's films. I remember that he was particularly impressed by the Cosi' Fan Tutte and Otello scenes in For the First Time, but a moment after expressing his surprise about the quality of Lanza's singing, he turned to me and said: "Don't try to change my mind about this man!"  

And I suspect that's exactly how the Opera-L regulars and their ilk feel as well :)

Cheers,

Derek   

[Thelma F. Prince]

Thelma Faye Prince to Derek and all.  I feel sorry for those people
who don't see the quality in Lanza's beautiful voice.  I have enjoyed
the voice most of my life and hate to see these people who think they
know everything about voices are always downgrading Lanza for some
reason.  I was there when his voice was FIRST heard.  I am an old
woman of 82 now and that was when I was 13.  I think I was given the
gift of knowing when I hear a beautiful voice.  My appreciation of the
voice now is every time I hear it, I find it wondrous.  It has given
me a lifetime of beauty, hearing Lanza.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Thelma: I think it's significant that the people on Opera-L (and elsewhere) who regurgitate one or more of these myths---that Lanza had a small voice, that he couldn't sustain or learn an operatic role, that he was a stylistic ruffian, etc---grew up during a time of cultural snobbery towards Lanza. Most of them were alive during his heyday, and their negative opinions were presumably influenced by the often scathing view of him by musical snobs at the time, and also, of course, by the negative press that he received in the 1950s. That snobbery towards Lanza was certainly very real, as Domingo points out in his Preface to Armando's book. 

Fortunately, future generations will not be exposed to those prejudices, and I'm confident that they'll assess Lanza's worth on the basis of his recordings alone. In fact, we're already seeing that now with much younger listeners---people in their 20s, for example---who couldn't care less about the scandals that plagued Lanza in the 1950s, or the supposedly negative fact that he made movies. When these people hear Lanza at his best (and I don't mean the lightweight and often poorly sung material that has dominated Sony/BMG's Lanza CD releases during the last 15 years or so), they are understandably impressed---amazed even. But gaining access to those recordings (on CD, at least) is never easy, given the dearth of consistently excellent Lanza compilations. That's why Sony needs to ensure that the best of Lanza's recorded legacy is vigorously promoted---and organized logically too---as I argue in this essay.   

Cheers,

Derek   

[leeann]

 A few days ago, novelist and blogger Jacqueline Lynch wrote a long post on The Great Caruso at "Another Old Movie Blog."

The post is really about Ann Blyth more than Lanza--it takes a while to get into comments about him, about his influence, and about his relationship with Ann Blyth, but when the reader gets there, there's a nice quote from Armando's Mario Lanza: A Great American Tragedy.  Lynch isn't always impressed with Lanza's acting, but she's quite clear on his musical influence and the importance of the film:

Though we may lump The Great Caruso as one of those typical Hollywood biographies that were not “realistic,” and despite whatever faults the film possesses, it has a noble legacy: many opera singers admittedly trace their interest and discovery of opera to Maria Lanza in this movie.  Two great tenors of our time: Placido Domingo and José Carreras, are among them.

A great deal of Lynch's information came from an August 2002 article, "The Last Metro Girls," in Opera News.  Here, Brian Hellow interviews Ann Blyth, Kathryn Grayson, and Jane Powell. [A PDF of the article is attached.]

These actresses are discussed in the context of their music, MGM, and the musical itself during the 1940s and 1950s. Heller points out that "MGM offered plenty of opportunities for high-flying sopranos--and moviegoers flocked to see their films." And he believes, "Of all the sopranos on the [MGM] lot at the time, Blyth may have had the most naturally beautiful instrument."

Grayson talks a bit about Lanza, "There was the greatest of all tenors....He could do more with his voice than Caruso..."  But Hellow's comments about Grayson's voice are worth a smile: 

She was a high, high coloratura...with a distinctively chirpy timbre that was at times quite impressive and at others slightly unnerving. Unlike Blyth's, her voice wasn't always warm and inviting; there was something steely, a kind of stand-back-I'm-going-to-show-you quality in her high-flying triple Axels.

For better or worse, though (and I think most forum readers would cringe at the thought of Grayson at the Met), Grayson says Mayer encouraged her not to seek a career in opera, "If she's known as an opera star, she'll have a short career. Just the operagoers will know who she is. If she is a motion-picture star, she'll be a star forever."

[Derek McGovern]

Armando just sent me this link to an interesting blog post on For the First Time:

https://charlespaolino.wordpress.com/category/music/

My only niggles: the writer gets the surname of Lanza's character wrong (it's Costa, not "Conti"), and he took all three accompanying photos from our site without acknowledging their source :) 

[Derek McGovern]

A few random thoughts on the 2002 Opera News article discussed by Lee Ann in her very interesting post of July 15:

Somehow Opera News gets its own prominent feature writer's name wrong! It's Brian Kellow, not the rather comical "Hellow" :)

I do agree with Kellow's assessment of Ann Blyth's voice as the most "naturally beautiful" of the film sopranos at MGM in the 1950s. She always had a pleasing quality---ideal for Hollywood operettas---and, like Kellow, I particularly enjoyed her singing in The Student Prince. She was a good actress too. The only real criticism I'd make of her singing in her two soundtracks with Lanza is that she had a tendency to go a bit flat. 

But what a lovely person---and what a remarkably youthful 74 she is in the accompanying photo! And in photos taken last year at a TCM Festival, she still looked amazing eleven years later (see below).

Kellow was certainly accurate when he wrote that Kathyn Grayson was "an altogether more aggressive performer in every way." That made me smile! He's still too kind to her voice, though---"steely" doesn't begin to describe that nails-on-the-blackboard sound for me---but I'm pleased he included her positive assessment of Lanza. It was just a shame it came at the expense of Caruso---and then she (typically) had to make it all about herself :)

As for her much-(self)heralded "four-octave voice," I'm surprised Kellow didn't question such obvious nonsense!

Thanks for a most interesting read, Lee Ann.

   

Cheers,

Derek

Ann Blyth aged 85 (TCM Festival, 2013)

[Armando]

Thank you for posting the Opera News article, Lee Ann. There are some interesting anecdotes in it, and the usual prattle from Grayson. Yes, for once, she praises Lanza, but coming from someone who once told me that Callas was a ham, it doesn’t really mean much. And the nonsense about singing Lucia at the Met! “Mr Johnson thought I was a dramatic coloratura.” This is typical of Grayson, who always lived in a sort of fantasy world.

She said she performed in a number of operas in the US and Europe. To the best of my knowledge she only sang Violetta once in Phoenix, Arizona, in the early sixties, but if anyone is aware of her performing anywhere else in other operas I’m happy to be corrected.  Grayson also wondered why she didn’t get to portray Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody. Kellow should have reminded her that Lawrence was a dramatic soprano who specialised in Wagnerian roles. But then Grayson could not be contradicted. Poor old Kellow attempted to do just that with Grayson’s absurd statement about Dalila and it didn’t get him anywhere.

The truth is that, deep down, Grayson knew she couldn’t cut it as an opera singer. I once asked her why she didn’t attempt a career in opera. There was no mention of Mayer stopping her, or the Met wanting her to sing Lucia. Instead she answered “You and your opera- there is more to singing than opera!”

[Tony Partington]

Yes, thanks for posting the Opera News article Lee Ann. Very interesting.  Armando,  you hit the nail on the head with Kathryn Grayson.  She really did live in some sort of world of her own: Four octave range, CARMEN being a good role for her, etc. Perhaps Rolland Bessett would like to write a book about what sort of mental disorders dear Kathryn suffered from. Ciao - Tony

Tony Partington

[Armando]

On Monday, July 28, 2014 10:16:09 PM UTC+10, Tony Partington wrote:

 

Armando,  you hit the nail on the head with Kathryn Grayson.  She really did live in some sort of world of her own: Four octave range, CARMEN being a good role for her, etc. Perhaps Rolland Bessett would like to write a book about what sort of mental disorders dear Kathryn suffered from. Ciao - Tony

 

Good suggestion, Tony. The ravings of an amateur psychiatrist should make for some amusing reading!:-)

Cheers,

Armando

[Derek McGovern]

I came across this 2010 post by Armando today, and was so taken with it that I thought I'd reprise it here. The post was Armando's reply to a question I'd asked him about Colleen Lanza, with whom he'd become good friends in the late 1970s.  

Ciao Armando: Can you recall any particular comments that Colleen made to you about her father's singing? I know she didn't like the Lanza on Broadway album ("I've never heard my father sing so badly," she said on one of your interview tapes that I listened to). 

Hi Derek: Colleen was particularly fond of the first recording session and singled out the two operatic arias and Mamma Mia Che Vo Sape.’ Not so keen on Core ‘N Grato typical overblown Hollywood arrangement, nor her father’s out of control Core at the start of the reprise. I pointed out the exaggerated recitative and parlando in Celeste Aida and she agreed that it was overdone but still thought that, overall, it was a good performance of the aria. 

Absolutely loved the commercial E Lucevan le Stelle, Song of India, and just about all of the Student Prince score, particularly Beloved and the Serenade. She said, jokingly, that if a man sang like that to a woman she would fall instantly in love with him regardless of what he looked like, and then added “And my father was wasn't exactly bad looking, was he!” 

I asked her about the singing in Serenade and she told me that as a very little girl she had seen the film of Othello with Orson Welles and sort of fell in love with him as she thought he looked somewhat like her father. “Although my father was better looking,” she was quick to add. A few years later she saw Mario as Otello in Serenade and thought he looked marvellous in his makeup. But it was not until she saw Serenade as an adult that she fully appreciated his stunning interpretation of the Moor. She thought the role was tailor made for him and singled out both the monologue and “The terrifying sequence with Albanese.” 

She loved Vesti la Giubba in GC and equally in FTFT -she had difficulty in choosing between the two, as she liked the sheer excitement and shine of the earlier performance but also the burnished dramatic sound of the latter. She also thought he was extremely convincing in the death of Otello, but she preferred the costume and makeup in Serenade. Hated Pineapple Pickers with a vengeance but loved O Sole Mio. 

She had nothing positive to say about SHOR. She made me laugh with this comment, “My father was really a soft touch, he must have felt sorry for that screechy little girl and the result was that she ruined a beautiful song!” (Arrivederci Roma) 

I wish I had asked her what she thought about the later recordings: Mario, Caruso Favorites etc. but, unfortunately, I didn’t. 

We did talk quite a bit about her voice and singing- she had a beautiful lyric soprano voice but not an ounce of confidence. So I arranged to have dinner at Xavier Cugat’s restaurant (which also had a resident pianist) with her plus her friend Ann Myers and some other person whom I cannot recall. The idea was to try and get her to sing, but even after she had a few drinks she wouldn’t budge and I ended up singing on my own for the best part of an hour. 

So there you have it. If I think of anything else she commented on I’ll post it.   

Great stuff! But at the same time, there's a poignancy here in that Colleen never got to have such musical discussions as an adult with her father. Lanza, I'm sure, would have been delighted by Colleen's love of opera and her obvious musical awareness.  

[Derek McGovern]

Armando's recollection (above) that Colleen Lanza loved her father's 1958 recording of "O Sole Mio" prompted me to play that rendition just now. 

Colleen certainly had good taste! While this has always been a polarizing recording---Bessette, for example, dismisses it as "terrible"---I find Lanza's suavely sung rendition a delight from start to finish. And the depth in his voice, particularly at the beginning, is really quite astonishing. In fact, it's so rich that a friend I once played this recording to thought I'd invested in a new set of speakers with enhanced lower frequencies :)  

Decent reproductions of the recording are hard to come by, but the attached---another one of Vince's splendid transfers from vinyl---is about as good as it gets. 

I'd be interested to know which Lanza version of this song people prefer. Mario recorded it three times: in a two-verse version in 1949 for RCA, again in 1951 for the Coke Shows (with the same arrangement and conductor), and then in a one-verse take in 1958 for For the First Time. I doubt that the super-rough Coke version has many fans (though for some bizarre reason it was selected for Mario Lanza: The Definitive Collection), but the 1949 version certainly has a lot of admirers:      

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngIG0vxRLic

It's hard to imagine two more different renditions of the same song than the 1949 and 1958 versions of "O Sole Mio." The keys, the arrangements, the approach, the mood...all of these things are completely different.

Which version do you prefer?   

[jora...@gmail.com]

 Mario and Deanna Durbin were the same age and I know there were rumors about them linking up to sing, or to do a movie....but, is there any evidence that they ever actually met? What beautiful duets they could have done!

On Sunday, June 1, 2014 11:39:37 AM UTC-4, Derek McGovern wrote:

Time for a new "Miscellaneous" Lanza thread. As always, please use this discussion for any general comments or questions about Mario Lanza that you feel don't warrant their own separate thread.  

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Joe: I'm not aware of Lanza and Durbin ever having met. Durbin, of course, was at a different studio---Universal---and her final film was released around the same time that Lanza started work on That Midnight Kiss. I doubt very much that they would ever have crossed paths, and given the forthright Durbin's low opinion of the Hollywood scripts that she was being offered in the late 1940s, I can't imagine that she would have wanted to be in something like That Midnight Kiss or The Toast of New Orleans. 

Armando mentions in his book that MGM reportedly tried to lure Durbin out of retirement to play Kathy in The Student Prince, but she wouldn't have a bar of it!    

While I wouldn't have wanted anyone but Ann Blyth in The Student Prince, I would have much preferred Durbin over Grayson in Lanza's first two films :)

[Derek McGovern]

A P.S. to the above: Durbin broke her decades-long silence to give one (final) interview in 1983 to film writer David Shipman (a virulently anti-Lanza critic, incidentally). It's very interesting (and amusing too in its recounting of Joe Pasternak's attempts to lure her out of retirement):

http://greatentertainersarchives.blogspot.kr/2014/01/interview-deanna-durbin-1983.html

I see that one of the reasons she quit Hollywood when her contract with Universal expired in 1949 is that the studio wouldn't give her story and director approval, despite her considerable box-office appeal. No doubt she would have sympathized with Lanza over his own studio clashes regarding the script quality of Because You're Mine and dislike of director Curtis Bernhardt!   

 

[Derek McGovern]

On second thoughts, Joe: Lanza and Durbin may have met. It's reported on various Durbin sites and on imdb.com that according to Charles David, Durbin's third and final husband, "The late Mario Lanza pleaded with her for years to make a film with him. But she will never go back to that life." Now whether that supposed pleading took place via a third party, I don't know, but I was interested to find these two articles just now from 1952, both of them mentioning Lanza and Durbin. In fact, one of them claims that Durbin was returning to the US in 1952 to make The Vagabond King with Lanza!! 

[Tony Partington]

Interesting stuff Derek! I wonder what Lanza thought of Durbin's voice and her acting. I've always enjoyed her films, though they seem to me to be on a par with BECAUSE YOU'RE MINE when it comes to dramatic content and artistic depth.

Tony Partington

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Tony: I think it's precisely because Durbin's films were on a par with Because You're Mine (or her final ones, at least) that she gave up on Hollywood:

Why did I give up my career? For one thing, just take a look at my last four films and you’ll appreciate that the stories I had to defend were mediocre, near impossible. Whenever I complained or asked for story or director approval, the studio refused. I was the highest paid star with the poorest material-today I consider my salary as damages for having to cope with such complete lack of quality.”

Still, if she had agreed to come out of retirement to make a film with Lanza, presumably she would have got her way regarding script quality, etc. That would have been good for both of them---and especially good for Mario. But would the two of them have clashed, I wonder? After all, from The Great Caruso onwards, Mario was very much the star of his pictures, and had the lion's share of the singing. Pairing up with Durbin would presumably have meant equal singing honours as well as shared billing. 

It's fun to contemplate, though!

Cheers,

Derek

[Barnabas Nemeth]

Have you heard about this?

http://www.amazon.com/Mario-Lanza-152-Success-Facts/dp/1488558523/ref=sr_1_82?ie=UTF8&qid=1407854638&sr=8-82&keywords=mario+lanza

Cheers, Barnabas

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Barnabas: Don't waste your money on that! I'm almost 100% certain that everything in that so-called book has been lifted from Wikipedia.

Speaking of which, I must get round to removing the ridiculous assertion on The Great Caruso Wikipedia film page that Elaine Malbin recorded two duets with Lanza for that movie's soundtrack!:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Caruso

Cheers,

Derek

[leeann]

Derek, just to backtrack a little. There's another thing that's unfortunate about the Tim Page article in the Los Angeles Times you cited above.

While doing other research at the Library of Congress, I learned that Pages' commentary on Lanza is on a cassette, "Tim Page on Music: Views and Reviews,"  which

Features interviews with various artists, including Plácido Domingo, 
Mario Lanza, Arthur Rubinstein, and Frank Sinatra. Also contains 
critiques of Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, Andrew Lloyd Webber's 
compositions, and performances by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and others. 2002.

It's among recordings of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. But then, libraries are repositories, not adjudicators, of fact and fiction.

And in the good news category, however, is that the National Library Service also includes a Lanza Cassette under the category "Musical Instructional Cassettes" devoted to excerpts from operas and "Granada."

Regrettably, Page is highly respected, as you point out, He knows music.  He's won a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to music criticism and eight years ago, Opera News named him among the 25 most influential people in the world of opera. It is just too bad that his commentary on Lanza doesn't reflect the breadth and depth of well-rounded opinion for which he seems to be known.

I wonder if he'd ever want to revisit the ideas in that article.

[Armando]

Tim Page may well be a respected critic and Pulitzer prize winner, but in writing about Lanza he should have done his homework rather than rely almost entirely on Bessette’s book, which, as we well know, is simply a rehash of most of the less flattering articles -some true and some entirely fabricated by the press- that appeared during the tenor’s lifetime, plus some added nonsense, such as Lanza being bipolar.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out Bessette’s angle in writing the book –he thought that a sensationalistic approach would earn him a few bucks. He should have known better. The reading public in general, are not that gullible, as was proved by the low sales of the Callinicos' book (a much better book than Bessette’s) and the even lower sales of the trashy Robinson effort.

But the Pulitzer winning Mr Page apparently fell for what he terms a “most authoritative” biography!

Mr. Page does get a few things right. He states that “There is no way to assess Lanza’ life as anything but a tragedy”, that Lanza never received the seasoning an opera singer requires, and that he had no time to grow. He also acknowledges that the voice was an extraordinary one, and that he had an abundance of gifts.

But he also gets quite a few things wrong. Among others, he makes the blatant mistake of stating that Lanza never received the training required. He also points out that the tenor could barely read music, which is totally irrelevant in view of the numerous singers, among them, Caruso, Warren, Pinza, Freni and Pavarotti who all managed to have pretty decent careers without being able to read a single note.

But it’s the lack of training comment that really puzzles me. Since Mr Page is reputably an expert music critic, does he really think that one can make impressive recordings of such arias as M’appari and O paradiso, or live singing such as the 1947 Hollywood Bowl and 1948 Toronto concerts without proper training?  

Like Derek, I’ll give Mr. Page the benefit of the doubt by saying that I suspect he hasn’t delved deep enough into the tenor’s discography prior to writing the article.  

 

 

[Tony Partington]

Hi Derek,

 

Just wanted to let you know that I was in Wikipedia doing some maintenance work and I thought I would help you.  I deleted that line in THE GREAT CARUSO entry which states Elaine Malbin recorded duets with Lanza for the "soundtrack."  Hope this is alright. 

 

All the best,

 

Tony

[leeann]

Quickly noted:  Peter Prichard, Lanza's British press agent (1957-58)  has passed away.  An obituary from The Telegraph is here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11070743/Peter-Prichard-obituary.html

In 2009, tenor Andrew Bain produced a two-part radio documentary: "The Mario Lanza Story." Discussions on the forum about this documentary and Peter Prichard's memories of working with Lanza (sometimes controversial) in that documentary appear here in the forum.

Derek also discusses Prichard and the 2005 documentary in "Lanza the Performer: A List of Confirmed Performances Before a Live Audience in Opera, Concert, Recital, Television, and Radio ."

[Tony Partington]

Well I'll say this for Prichard, he was a scrappy devil. I do agree with Derek though and his comments made in 2009; it's unfortunate Prichard didn't speak more about the ARTIST Mario Lanza. As Derek noted, he was there, he heard Lanza and worked with him. Sad that all he wants to or could remember was how hungry Mario was. Perhaps Peter didn't really have too keen an ear after all?!

Tony Partington

[Derek McGovern]

The other day Armando alerted me to comments about Lanza on this blog published by Virginia classical radio station WTJU:

http://wtjuclassical.blogspot.kr/2010/07/mystique-of-faux-opera-singer-every.html?showComment=1410237695284#c1786854135176807873

Unfortunately, the article is four years old, but that hasn't stopped me from adding my own comments, particularly in response to the allegation that Lanza's operatic performances were without "any particular distinction."

[Derek McGovern]

I must say I'm a little surprised by the complete lack of response on the Rense forum to Derek Mannering's recent post there about running an operatic CD proposal past Sony. While I wouldn't say that Mr. Mannering sounded particularly excited about the idea of a second all-operatic Lanza CD, he deserves credit for at least agreeing to approach Sony about it. 

In his post, he was at pains to emphasize that there would be nothing new on this compilation if it were to go ahead. Actually, that doesn't have to be the case. There's an exciting third RCA take of "Vesti la giubba" that's never been released (except on a Damon Lanza Productions CD), among other things. While I wouldn't want that released at the expense of a properly remastered version of the superior 1958 For the First Time rendition, it would make a great bonus track. Mr. Mannering could also use his contacts at TCM to move heaven and earth to grant Sony permission to release material from The Great Caruso and Because You're Mine. 

I'd also like to respond to his implied criticism of Lanza for not having recorded any opera for RCA after 1950. This is something that comes up on Rense quite often---usually as "evidence" to support the view that Lanza wasn't serious about recording opera.

RCA recorded seventeen arias and two duets with Lanza over a thirteen-month period (May 1949-June 1950). That wasn't a bad effort when one considers that LPs were only in their infancy at that time---in fact, 78s were still the bigger sellers until at least 1952. I would imagine that both RCA and Mario felt that nineteen operatic recordings were enough of a stockpile for at least two to three years. One could also add (at a pinch) the 1953 "Song of India" to that operatic stockpile, as it's not a radical departure from Rimsky-Korsakov's original aria (from Sadko).   

As we all know, the bust-up over The Student Prince threw Mario off-course for a couple of years, but he was back recording opera in a major way by 1955 for Serenade. From RCA's perspective, since they were releasing that soundtrack on their label, they may well have felt that the album contained enough solid opera---heck, it included fourteen and a half minutes' continuous music from Otello for starters!---to satisfy public demand for a while. Then within three years of Serenade's release, RCA and Lanza were planning the recording of complete operas, which would have taken place in Bologna during 1960-61.  Plans were also well underway to re-record The Great Caruso album in 1960 in stereo. So, yes, while it's true that RCA didn't record Lanza singing opera after June 1950, the man himself continued to record operatic material right up to September 1958 (the FTFT soundtrack)---recordings that he knew RCA would be releasing. He certainly never made a decision to stop recording opera for RCA---quite the opposite, in fact. When you get down to it, it's only a historical accident that we don't have more RCA operatic recordings.  

And from Lanza's perspective, he never really stopped recording or performing opera after June 1950, whether it was for the soundtracks of his movies, the Coke Shows, the second Shower of Stars show in 1954, or in concert from 1957 to 1958. 

Should he have recorded more opera? Of course! But let's not beat the guy up too much about it. He still managed to pack a lot of recording magic into a ten-year period, even with all the upheavals. And I'm quite sure he went to his grave believing that his next decade was going to be his most productive as far as opera was concerned.

[leeann]

Derek, it seems wise to set the record straight about a couple of other ideas in that Mannering post. There's so much misinformation "out there," precision seems like a good thing.

First, I WISH that Eric Myers' very keen statements on the impact of Lanza's voice actually "give lie to the notion that Lanza is treated badly by critics." Eric Myers not withstanding, historically, Lanza often was treated badly by the critics, and we know that treatment  (the devastating 1951 Time magazine cover story, for example) was a factor in his retreat from the public eye.

Critics often were cruel to Lanza, and that's fact.

What's changed, I think, is the nature of music criticism itself--the narrowly defined dividing line of judgment between highbrow and popular culture is blurred. We've mellowed. There's a tendency, more and more,  to look at talent  on the basis of what it is, not what it is not. And so now, contemporary critics--those not mired in past value systems--increasingly judge Lanza  on the basis of his vocal intelligence, interpretive nuance,  on his extraordinary voice rather than on the fact that his career trajectory didn't fit into a norm (or at least the expected norm for a voice of that magnificence). But unquestionably, there are still contemporary critics and commentators who rehash the same old Lanza stuff without validating or corroborating their sources--and many of them really ought to know better.

Myers just isn't one of them.

In fact, he's has been awfully good about "getting" Lanza as the post points out, and in a 1999 article in Opera News, "Lanza's Legacy," he summed up the "Lanza dilemma," interestingly quoting from that Time magazine article, ""He is at once the delight of bobby-soxers, housewives and ordinary song-lovers," said Time magazine in a 1951 cover story, "and the despair of musical highbrows who believe that a great singer's goal should be the Metropolitan, not Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer."

And Myers also says,

Lanza's talent, star power and early death have made him an icon to rank with other '50s flame-outs like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. All three died young; all three created a visceral response in the public that retains its power and mystique despite decades of radical change in fashion and taste. Lanza's looks and exuberant charm alone would have qualified him for film stardom; the added attraction of that magnificent voice gave him a crossover appeal that has never been matched. He remains the only operatic tenor in history to have become a Hollywood superstar. ...

Lanza's voice is rich, ripe, unmistakable. A huge column of spinto sound, it mixes Italianate ardor with a very American brightness -- and perhaps this is one of the secrets of his enormous appeal. Lanza was a first-generation Italian-American, and he succeeded in blending and enhancing the attributes of the old world with the enthusiastic optimism of the new. There is a joy in his voice that radiates a pure love of singing, a heart held wide open to an audience. To hear Lanza's records is to fall willing prey to his power. His films -- such as Serenade, which shows what he could do in everything from L'Arlesiana to Otello --make it clear that the world lost a fine singing actor when he died. There has never been another American tenor with such an astonishing concentration of gifts.

I love it: "a heart held wide open to an audience." Bravo, Eric Myers.

I'd also qualify the blanket statement that Lanza's Coke shows, as an entity, are much-maligned. The Coke shows aren't really a package deal. This forum, anyway, has been pretty clear that those shows  include some of Lanza's most brilliant singing but, let's face it, some of his not-so-good material as well.  Not a surprise, given the production and rehearsal environment--and of course, they weren't intended for posterity anyway. Thank heavens so many of those selections are accessible, and that we can pick and choose on an individual basis.

[Tony Partington]

Ciao Leeann and Derek!

 

Friends, indeed it does seem wise to set the record straight and I would kindly proffer that the lackluster response to Derek Mannering's post regarding an all opera CD does not really surprise me.  I have never gotten the impression that the good folks on the Jeff Rense forum are particularly keen on opera per se and in general, have a fondness for the young Lanza voice (circa 1949-1954). 

 

While I am sure you, and most of the folks on this forum, would agree, Lanza's voice at that particular stage in his career was indeed brilliant in sound, remarkable in its innate energy and unique in its arrestingly emotional quality.  There were facets about the voice which - at least at that stage and in my opinion - were still in the process of maturing or "blooming" into the "opera singer" Mario was to become.  True indeed; some of his early operatic recordings for RCA Victor were very, very good - brilliant even (e.g.: "Che gelida manina).  But what Lanza was able to bring to operatic works, both vocally and musically from 1955 on is, to my ears, nothing short of amazing.  There is an intelligence and artistic understanding of both the music and the drama which I cannot say I felt was there - at least not in any consistent way - in the early days of his career.  Hearing and seeing that intelligence, that artistic completeness in the films SERENADE and FOR THE FIRST TIME my belief is merely reaffirmed and that is that; had Mario Lanza lived beyond his thirty-eight years, he could and would have matured into one of the greatest opera tenors of the twentieth century, perhaps the greatest of all time. 

 

As Eric Myers said of Mario Lanza, "There has never been another American tenor with such an astonishing concentration of gifts."  I fully agree and those gifts, had they proceeded along a logical course, would have dispelled and made moot all the snobby "artistic" criticism we still to this day see served up.  Then again, if I were lucky enough to sit down with Mario Lanza and talk with him about music, theatre, opera and his heaven sent gifts I feel sure I would be tempted to relate to him what the great Irish playwright Brendan Behan said of critics: "Sure the critic is like the eunuch in the harem.  He sees it done every night, but he can't do it himself."  Somehow I feel sure that Mario would laugh.

[Joseph Fagan]

GREAT post Tony, you nailed it!

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Tony: Belated thanks for removing that nonsense from The Great Caruso page on Wikipedia about Elaine Malbin recording for the soundtrack.

I've just gone and tidied up the Lanza entry on Wikipedia as well, adding a few things here and there---to the "Opera Career" section, for instance---removing repetition, and correcting some badly written sentences. (For example, one "helpful" person recently contributed a claim from a British TV show that it was "revealed" that Lanza suffered hallucinations when drunk. I've changed "revealed" to "alleged.") I know people generally mean well when they add stuff to the Lanza page, but so much misinformation has appeared there over the years that I just wish the uninformed would leave it alone!

Cheers,

Derek   

[Vincent Di Placido]

I'm reading Vic Damone's autobiography, "Singing was the easy part" at the moment & just came accross this passage about Mario... 

"Another friend of mine from MGM was Mario Lanza. Mario’s parents were from Abruzzi, and he was born in South Philadelphia’s Italian neighborhood as Alfredo Cocozza. He took his stage name from his mother’s maiden name, as I did, since Cocozza just would not have worked in those days. He had been a truck driver back in Philly, but was also classically trained. He had played the part of Enrico Caruso in The Great Caruso, which was a huge success; critics actually compared him to Caruso himself. When I met him he was just about to start The Student Prince. 

Mario’s voice was phenomenal; it I was an unbelievably powerful instrument. He was a big, good- looking guy, too, so the studio saw him as one of their prime upcoming stars. One night I was fast asleep in my apartment when I had a dream that someone was calling my name: “Vittorio, Vittorio, Vittorio.” The voice kept getting louder and louder until I woke up. “Vittorio, Vittorio. Where are you, Vittorio?” Now the voice was louder, much louder. There was no mistaking it. Nobody else had a voice like that. 

I had met Lanza not too long before and he had never visited me, but I had told him I lived at the Havenhurst Apartments, right up the street from Sunset Boulevard. I looked at the clock. It was 2:15. He was outside somewhere in the dark, calling for me. “Vittorio, Vittorio! Where are you, Vittorio?” I got up and opened my door. And there he was, disheveled, like he had just been in a fight. He had blood on his shirt and only one shoe on. He was bombed. “Mario, Jesus. What’s the matter? What happened to you?” “Vittorio, Vittorio, I really did it. Oh, Vittorio.” “Did it? Did what? What did you do?” “I was having a drink at the bar.” I knew the bar he must have meant, on Sunset, just across from where Havenhurst came to a T. “I was just relaxing, Vittorio. I was ready to go home, because it was two o’clock. You can’t drink anymore after two o’clock. Do you know that, Vittorio? These two guys were there, cops, plainclothes cops. And they tried to take my drink away from me. I told them, ‘Let me finish it.’ And they said no. Vittorio, they took my drink. My drink! I told them, ‘It’s my drink. I paid for it. Let me finish my drink.’ Then they got rough with me, Vittorio.” Now, Mario and I had several things in common, one of which was boxing. He used to work with an ex- fighter named Terry Robinson. Terry trained him; they worked out all the time. Mario was a bull of a man to begin with, and he was in great shape. 

Mario hit one cop in the jaw. “I broke his jaw, Vittorio. I know I broke his jaw.” He gave the other cop one to the body and another to the jaw, and knocked him out, too. “They called an ambulance, Vittorio. And I ran away to look for you.” After I got Mario cleaned up a little, I made him a cup of coffee. “I’m okay, now,” he said. “I’m okay. I’m leaving you now, Vittorio. I just wanted to stop by to say hello.” And he got up to go, one shoe on and one shoe off. His car was still parked down on Sunset, and we had given the ambulance plenty of time to load up and leave. “Goodbye, Vittorio,” he said, as he closed the door behind him and walked off into the night. 

It was a great loss that Mario died so young. What we heard was that he had received an injection for something, but it wasn’t administered properly, and a bubble in the syringe went to his heart and killed him. This was in Italy some years later, where he had gone to live with his wife and children. Such a physically powerful guy, too. Serge Koussevitzky apparently had told him when he was young that he had the kind of voice that only appears once in a hundred years."

[Tony Partington]

Hi Vince!  Interesting story!!!  I've never heard that one, although I certainly believe Mario could have easily broken a policeman's jaw and also knocked one out.  I think it is interesting that Vic (Vittorio) says that Lanza "...was a bull of a man to begin with, and he was in great shape."  If this encounter is true and it did take place just before Mario started work (or filming) on THE STUDENT PRINCE he probably was in great shape.  I remember hearing Constantine Callinicos say in a radio interview that Mario approached THE STUDENT PRINCE with "..great enthusiasm."  Maestro Callinicos also told me - when I was working with him - the very same thing; that Lanza was totally enamoured with the project and thus wanted it to be nothing but a success.  Consequently, I can well imagine that he worked long and with Terry Robinson to get in top physical shape to look good before the cameras. 

 

Poor old Vic though, believing that it was an intravenously induced air embolism that killed Mario.  That's just about as preposterous as Lucky Luciano paying Lanza a visit at the Clinica Valle Giulia.  When will the world at large accept the fact that Mario died of a pulmonary embolism which caused a massive stroke and cardiac arrest. All this was caused by a partial clot breaking off from the larger blood clot in the deep vein system in his leg (remember, he was suffering from phlebitis with the complication of a deep vein thrombosis or DVT in the common femoral vein).  Here is a very good - and very quick explanation of what basically happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4B8AlimKI  

Ah well, a PE is not nearly as intriguing and mysterious as a Mafia hit or even an air embolism.  Who knows, maybe the staff member who allegedly introduced the air into Mario's vein was actually a hit man/woman for La Cosa Nostra!

 

Ciao, Tony

[leeann]

Well, maybe Vic Damon's reminiscence is true; maybe it's a reconstruction of a vague memory that could have been about Lanza or somebody else; maybe it's a twist and embellishment of a story that got bigger and more elaborate the more it was told over time because it's such a good story. Regardless,  it sure does point to Lanza's  "zest for living" that Armando and Dr. Philip Mackowiak wrote about in their breakthrough forensic analysis in The Pharos in 2010.

Except the full quote is in the title of the article, "A Fatal Zest for Living," and the two subject-matter experts talk about Lanza's medical history and explain what was going on in medical treatment and diagnosis in the 1950s.

Vince's post and Tony's explanation of what happens in the case of pulmonary embolism led to a revisit of that article (and forum threads that talk about it). There, Dr. Mackowiak, who's now professor emeritus and Vice Chairman, Department of Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Armando analyze all Lanza's available medical records documenting their conclusion that three possible causes exist for his death.  Certainly none of them are among the infamous conspiracy theories still running their course.

The three? "Myocardial infarction, a hypertensive cerebral hemorrhage, or a massive pulmonary embolus." The most likely? "The weight of evidence suggests that of the three likely causes of Lanza's death, the most probable is a fatal myocardial infarction and/or cardiac arrhythmia due to a diet-induced electrolyte imbalance."

An interview with Dr. Mackowiak is on the webpage with the article reprint.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: I'd say it's anyone's guess if the Damone story is true, embellished, or pure invention! But for what it's worth, the incident---along with a reference to an unnamed friend whom Lanza supposedly visited after the fight---is also mentioned in this ghastly mixture of half-truths and fantasy by Hedda Hopper:

http://www.rense.com/excursions/lanza/lanzabooks/hopper.html   

Cheers,

Derek

[Lou]

Tony wrote jokingly upthread:  Who knows, maybe the staff member who allegedly introduced the air into Mario's vein was actually a hit man/woman for La Cosa Nostra! To that I say, only half-jokingly: Or who knows, maybe the Mafia hit man was not a staff member but the last man to see Lanza alive -- within minutes of his death, in fact -- Dr. Frank Silvestri, the man of the unaccountably sealed lips. (This could explain his unbroken silence.) I have no medical background, but I'd guess an air embolism could induce a myocardial infarction, which Armando and Dr. Mackowiak have pointed to as the most probable cause of Lanza's death. (For entertaining the remote possibility, only half in jest, of the Mafia theory, I suppose I'll get the boot now.)  

[Tony Partington]

Hi Lou!  I don't think you have to worry about "getting the boot."  Goodness, we've all of us said, hypothesized and argued far worse things than your rather interesting conjectur about Silvestri and the possible shady staff at Clinica Valle Giulia.

 

I will share one thought which has been rolling around in my head since participating in this thread and that is I cannot help but wonder if the Lanza family, or the Cocozzas' might posssibly have suffered from a hypercoagulable disorder - something along the line of Factor V Leiden thrombophilia.  Factor V Leiden is one of the most common clotting disorders (of many) and can present in patients ranging from a virtually benign state to quite acutely serious.  the chances of inheriting Factor V Leiden are based upon the patients parents and can best be explained by the following excerpt from the U.S. National Library of Medicine: "The chance of developing an abnormal blood clot depends on whether a person has one or two copies of the factor V Leiden mutation in each cell. People who inherit two copies of the mutation, one from each parent, have a higher risk of developing a clot than people who inherit one copy of the mutation. Considering that about 1 in 1,000 people per year in the general population will develop an abnormal blood clot, the presence of one copy of the factor V Leiden mutation increases that risk to 3 to 8 in 1,000, and having two copies of the mutation may raise the risk to as high as 80 in 1,000."  With all this in mind, I cannot help but wonder about the Lanza / Cocozza heredity question regarding what might have played a part in Mario's premature demise.  Marc Lanza died at the age of 37 from a heart attack and Damon also had a fatal heart attack in 2008 at the age of 55.  Now both of these deaths could well have been the result of two entirely  different  causes (e.g.: one a haemorhagic  stroke and the other a PE induced MI) but in looking at these deaths from a clinical standpoint I cannot help but wonder if a hypercoagulable condition may have been involved.  I do not know what Mario's father's cause of death was, nor his mother's but I would be interested in finding out.  I also would not be surprised to learn that there was a history, in either Antonio or Maria, of clotting issues (e.g.: Thrombophlebitis, etc.). 

 

Coumadin (generic name: Warfarin) is still the most widely used anticoagulant world wide.  It came in to use most prominently as a pesticide against rats and mice in 1948.  By 1954 it was being used, with relative safety, as an anticoagulant.  One of the most famous people to become an early Coumadin patient was Dwight D. Eisenhower who was put on the medication following his heart attack in 1955.  The science of anticoagulation was in its infancy back in the 1950's though and unless an astute doctor suspected a coagulation issue, it is doubtful that Mario Lanza would have received the extensive hypercoagulability workup (if it were even available) which is standard practice today.  Interestingly enough, my wife specializes in anticoagulation and is an RN-Clinician, CACP (Certified Anticoagulation Care Provider).  In talking with her about this hypothesis and the possibility of Mario Lanza having a genetic hypercoagulable disorder, she believes it to be really quite probable.  If nothing else, it is interesting food for thought.

 

Ciao ~ Tony

 

[Armando]

Interesting theory, Tony. As for the other members of the Lanza/Cocozza family cause of death, Maria Lanza's was from cerebral haemorrhage, Tony Cocozza was 81, Marc choked on his own vomit, allegedly after taking a drug overdose, and Damon suffered from all sorts of ailments, some probably caused by excessive drinking. I think Maria’s father was close to 90 and her mother over 80. I have no record of Tony’s parents.  

Given Mario’s lifestyle and state of health, particularly during his last five years, I still believe that the cause of death was an embolus. 

Cheers,

Armando

[Tony Partington]

Thanks Armando for the ACTUAL causes of death regarding Damon and Marc Lanza.  I went only by what I found officially stated in a Google search.  I do agree with you as far as Mario goes.  It was, most likely and embolus.  My question is; from where? and here we get into, what I think anyway, may be a genetic condition.  

I do of course realize, we will never know conclusively - that is unless Elissa were to have a hypercoagulability workup.  For all we know, she is on (and has been on) chronic anticoagulation therapy because the diagnosis has already made.  As I say, all interesting from a clinical standpoint.

Ciao!

On Thursday, September 25, 2014 1:54:18 AM UTC-5, Armando wrote

[Armando]

On Friday, September 26, 2014 12:30:24 PM UTC+10, Tony Partington wrote:

I do agree with you as far as Mario goes.  It was, most likely and embolus.  My question is; from where?

 Tony: The embolus was the result of the phlebitis/ thrombosis that he suffered from.

 Armando 

[norma]

In the tv programme "Singing to the Gods"I was fascinated to hear Mario's photographer quote Mario as saying"I don't know"presumably when talking about how good his voice was.I think this shows how insecure Mario was and that he knew he was being rushed.
Norma