Singers and other Musicians Inspired By Mario Lanza
Steff
KAREL GOTT: “Mario Lanza became one of my artistic models”
As we all know many singers – not necessarily opera singers - have been inspired by Mario Lanza’s voice. Here’s one of them: Karel Gott.
A few years ago I mentioned the name of this Czech singer (who for decades has been very popular here in Germany and guest in countless German TV shows over the years) in one of my posts here on this forum. Karel Gott, born 1939, has been called the “Golden Voice from Prague” and “The Golden Nightingale.”
Interestingly it was 1959, the year of Mario Lanza's death, that would mark a turning point in Karel Gott’s life; In Prague he took part in a singing competition where the Czech jazz musician and bandleader Karel Krautgartner took notice of the young, talented singer and invited him to accompany him and his band:
“From 1959 I slowly but surely became an insider’s tip within the music-scene of Prague. I was not only performing with Karel Krautgartner’s orchestra then but also with other bands.” (From Karel Gott’s autobiography, see below).
I understand that the German teenager magazine “BRAVO” wrote the following about him in 1969: "The Czech pop star, called Sinatra of the East, is not just an ordinary pop music singer. Many people believe that he is estimated to become a second Mario Lanza. He has a skilled tenor voice of an unbelievable strength and beauty."
An American newspaper wrote in 1967:
"Something like Gott never has happened before behind the crumbling Iron Curtain. With good reason, Gott is called “the Frank Sinatra of Eastern Europe.”
Singing Western pop, Gott is the idol of youth in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia as well as his native Czechoslovakia […]. Indeed, the handsome “Eastern Sinatra” is a showcase exhibit for Czech Communism. German music critics acclaim his trained tenor voice […]. (Excerpt from Wilmington News Journal, 23 September 1967).
Well, in 2014 Karel Gott’s autobiography was published in Germany, titled “Zwischen zwei Welten. Mein Leben“ (“Between Two Worlds. My Life“ - Riva publishing house, Munich) and I understand it has not yet been translated in any other language).
Here’s an excerpt from the book (third chapter titled “From the Factory to the Stage … or Every Beginning is Difficult”) with some references to Mario Lanza (Translation by Steff Walzinger, March 2016).
“[…] In 1959 I spent my summer holidays at my grandmother’s in the countryside and with the beginning of the new academic year I reported on time at the conservatory. I was instructed by Professor Konstantin Karenin, one of the best opera singers in those days.
There was also another voice teacher, Professor Jan Berlík, a renowned operatic tenor who I already knew before my conservatory days. One day I knocked at the door of his home – he lived at the Charles Bridge - and I succeeded in convincing him to give me voice lessons. Professor Berlík was a true cosmopolitan and had already performed at the national theatres of Prague and Bratislava, at the Hamburg State Theatre and even in Zagreb. He liked me straight away and he was the one to help me to pass the entrance examination.
Back then my normal daily routine was to sing in the coffee houses in the evenings and at nights and to work in the factory during the day. I was not able to fully concentrate on either of those jobs as my young yet quite overworked body could not cope mentally. Consequently, my voice did not always work satisfactorily, and in the factory I occasionally would just fall asleep. The musicians with whom I played – notably the brilliant pianist and virtuoso Rudolf Rokl, who would later become a member of my own band and with whom I worked with very closely until his death in 1997 – told me: “It cannot go on like this. You have to make a decision and go to the conservatory. Music is your life, nothing else!”
Despite my classical training I wanted to use my voice, the voice of a tenor, to interpret songs in a genre that later would been called “pop music” and which had nothing to do with opera.
Back then I did not give it much thought that this was an absolute market niche. Nowadays the music critics would call it “crossover” - A classically trained tenor who, based on his classical voice training, devotes himself to popular instead of classical music. Slowly but surely the time of swing and the big baritone voices was drawing to a close.
Of course this kind of music still had its staunch public and would still keep it for years, but at the same time people were on the search for something new and trendy. In the Western world of the 1950s, Rock ‘n Roll came into fashion at high speed and, with Elvis in the U.S.A. and Peter Kraus in the German speaking countries, it experienced a terrific rocket-like rise.
In the U.S.A. there was an artist, actually a classical opera singer who, due to this so-called “cross-over” repertory, would rise to real pop idol status. His name was Mario Lanza. His records of classical as well as popular music became iconic in the United States and he was showered with gold records. Even if there was no Mario Lanza in our Czech country, it seemed as if the time had come to venture something similar. Mario Lanza became one of my artistic models and the group “The Platters” also became ground-breaking for me. “The Great Pretender,” “My Prayer”, all those songs showed me what can be achieved in the world of music without putting oneself into one definite category. Later I would cover many of them and adopt them to my own repertory.
Already during my first singing lesson at the conservatory I mentioned Mario Lanza’s song “Be My Love” to Professor Karenin. With this I caused him quite a headache because as soon as I had been accepted [at the conservatory] I made it clear to him that I didn’t want to become an opera singer. Yet I wanted to learn the technique as good and as accurately as possible, especially the Italian belcanto which, by all means, is a tenor’s foundation.
Professor Karenin was an excellent teacher. I owe him a lot, especially his embarking on this experiment which could not be taken for granted. Opera singers are very particular about things like that and it is not unlikely that I would have been expelled from the conservatory had I met another teacher. Professor Karenin was different. He showed great understanding and got my vocal basics [in German: Stimmfond] on the right track. He also accepted that I would sing jazz and pop songs [Schlager] at night.
As said before, with other teachers this might have meant an exclusion [from the conservatory] and Professor Karenin was quite aware of that. One day he came to the Café Alfa to hear me sing there. I felt a little uneasy as this was not the atmosphere he was used to. It was neither an opera house nor a concert hall but simply a club. However, he listened to my performance, poured wine into his glass and eventually remarked to me: “It’s not bad. It shows expressiveness but there’s too little of your soul in it and that is what you have to add. You have to incorporate it into your songs. There must be a part of you even in the simplest melody. If you succeed in that you will get the feeling of becoming absorbed in the song, the feeling that it is not yourself anymore but only the song. That’s the essential when singing. There are already enough singers lacking soul. But we will do it different, you will see! However, don’t forget that some songs do damage to your voice.”
I asked him if he would continue teaching me after this evening. “Of course,” Professor Karenin replied, “why should a singer of popular music not have the right of having classical voice training? I expect you tomorrow, fresh and rested.” The following day it would be the first time that I arrived fairly rested for the lesson.
Apart from the actual voice training Professor Karenin also taught me to treat my voice like an instrument, yet not to go easy with it at all costs as tenors usually would do. “You have to make your voice resistant against external influences. You have to train it so that it behaves even if the conditions are not perfect,” he once declared to me. De facto this would mean, for example, to go out without a scarf even if it was bone-chilling cold. But there were also other tricks to toughen up [my voice]: Karenin was a chain-smoker and during the singing lessons he would pointedly smoke one cigarette after another whereby the practice room would be filled with smoke - similar to some bar late at night. And even that made sense.
Thanks to Professor Karenin I am still able nowadays to sing very different musical genres during one and the same concert without this affecting my voice. In 1980 I gave several renditions of “Be My Love” at the Congress Center Hamburg. I switched between my own voice and those of Gilbert Becaud and even Louis Armstrong. Mario Lanza has inspired many famous artists. Luciano Pavarotti was a frequent visitor at the Mario Lanza Museum in Philadelphia and made a new recording of the song “Mamma.” Elvis Presley sang “O sole mio” in honour of him (“It’s Now or Never”). In 1951 Mario Lanza impersonated the great Enrico Caruso. His portrayal touched the young José Carreras so very much that he decided to become an opera singer. And as already mentioned, I too belong to the true fans of this exceptional artist Lanza who, by some, has been considered the best singer of the 20th century […].” (Translation by Steff Walzinger, March 2016)
Incidentally, being asked in an interview for the German magazine “FOCUS” (May 2014) what singer influenced him in particular Karel Gott answered:
“In 1959 I got a record of Mario Lanza. This tenor had an incredibly good voice and I said I wish I could sing like him. This man removed the barriers between serious music and easy listening. That’s what I also wanted to do! And I wanted to do easy listening music with a classically trained voice.”
Among the many songs that Karel Gott recorded there are quite a few that we associate with Mario Lanza, such as “The Donkey Serenade,” “Love is a Many Splendored Things;” “Core ‘ngrato;” “Marecchiare;” “Torna a Surriento;” “Maria Mari;” “Vieni sul Mar;” “Fenesta che lucive;” “Mattinata;” “Santa Lucia;” “If I Loved You;” “Musica proibita;” “Be My Love;” “Vergiss mein nicht” (“Non ti scordar di me”) “La Danza;” “Arrivederci Roma;” “O sole mio;” “Funiculi, Funicula;” “Komm Zigany”/”Joj, Cigán” (“Play Gypsies, Dance Gypsies”), “Amor ti vieta,” “Agnus Dei.”
I understand that Karel Gott occasionally sings Mario Lanza’s signature song “Be My Love” at his concerts. In his autobiography he writes for example:
“In 2011 the Czech opera diva Eva Urbanová and the legendary and world-famous Alexandrow Ensemble performed with me at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall [Moscow]. When we all sang “Be My Love” together, I remarked: “That sounded like in good old Hollywood – in case that they still had the money to produce such a big show!”
Here are two renditions of him singing “Be My Love” - one is a studio recording from 1974 (for Polydor),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMhcdbd7jwg
the other is a very special version from a live concert (apparently in his home country) where Karel Gott is not only singing an excerpt of “Be My Love” but also imitating other well-known singers (the French chansonnier Gilbert Becaud, Frankie Laine (?) and Louis Armstrong).
http://www.karel-gott.cz/karel-gott-be-my-love/
On a sad note, Karel Gott was diagnosed with cancer last November. Latest press notices from the past days however are reporting that after chemotherapy he fortunately seems to be on the mend.
Steff
Additional note: Check out this website: www.coverinfo.de
What an amazing database of songs! See for example the list of singers who recorded “Be My Love:” (The list is not complete, as, for example, Joseph Calleja’s recording from his same named Decca album is missing.)
Derek McGovern
Derek McGovern
Steff
Steff
„Mario Lanza in a Rock Context“
RONNIE JAMES DIO (1942 – 2010), a heavy metal vocalist
http://www.thehighwaystar.com/news/2016/03/09/mario-lanza-in-a-rock-context/
“I started playing at five years old. I was a trumpet player, five years old, and so that I think shaped me more than anything because it was very classical education. I grew up playing very classically oriented music, played orchestras most of the time as I was growing up in high school, had a lot of opera around my house that helped me a lot, too. I mean my hero was a guy named Mario Lanza and I wanted to be like him, so when my opportunity came to be in a band or to create my own I took that attitude, which was so natural for me to take, and put it inside a rock context and I think, you know, I was one of the first to do that if not the first to do that, and so it was that opera training, or that training with that opera-listening, and of course the classical training with the trumpet that made a whole difference for me.” (From the “Blairing Out Show”)
And being asked in an interview from 2003 who were his heroes Ronnie James Dio replied:
“When I grew up it was obviously not rock that you hear today – it wasn’t heavy like that, you know, guitars weren’t whacking through distortion. For distortion, we would just pluck tubes out of our amps so we could get that “ughhnn” and then of course the amp would blow up after a while when it would fry all the other tubes… we knew what we wanted to do, but the music that was around was not this kind of heavy stuff, so you didn’t do that. But growing up for me, first hearing music, was with my grandmother and grandfather who listened to opera all the time. My hero was a guy named Mario Lanza -- he was my hero. I loved that man so much when I heard him sing, I thought, “Wow! Check him out!” My dad was a really good singer, too, never was a professional, never even sang in an amateur way. I used to hear him sing and would think, “Whoa! That’s pretty good…” (Interview from 2003)
Steff
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02sd0xg
“The piece of music I’ve inherited was the “Drinking Song” from “The Student Prince” by Mario Lanza whose voice I fell in love with when I was a very small child, so this is very early 1950s. I just remember it was the first song that really got to me as a kid and I used to roll around the floor in ecstasy at the sound of his very joyful, powerful tenor voice. I think, you know, Mario Lanza had this voice that was extraordinary. I mean you could really hear the walls shaking to the sound of it. It’s probably the most powerful tenor voice ever. I am sure it’s a voice to shatter chandeliers. Rock guitar wasn’t invented at that point, but I think something must have permeated through the idea of sustain, vibrato, power - and it’s joyful […].”
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/leisure/music/interviews/9538083.Still_going_strong_on_his_own/
“You have to remember that I was born before the advent of rock ’n’ roll,” he says with a laugh “My dad played the harmonica and I kind of followed that lead.
http://www.themouthpiece.com/forum/threads/interview-with-steve-hackett.19731/
“Your early compositions with Genesis were somewhat ground breaking and created fascinating soundscapes. What early musical influences inspired you and led you to compose in this manner?”
Hackett: “My love of chords and of the many structures and colours that can be created using them. I developed a love of chords at an early age, but unusually, I also sometimes have a frustration with them in that on times, I find I am unable to do more with them than I would like to. For instance; I am currently working on an orchestral sketch and find I am regularly using a chord that I will have used previously many times in other pieces, but by changing just one note of this chord totally reinvents the colour and shape of what is produced. That tiny little musical nuance creates a totally new colour… with one little small adjustment, the entire sketch is recreated. This always gives me inspiration to experiment and learn. Also, as a young kid growing up in the 1950’s I found that one of the first things I liked listening to on the radio was the sound of Mario Lanza; little did I understand then that this was the sound of Opera and of the musical influence it would have on me.
Interviewer: “You now
have your own unique Steve Hackett style, but are these early influences
still prevalent today?”
Hackett: “Yes they most certainly are; I still have a deep passionate love of chords and their progressions, and I find that the likes of Bach and Mario Lanza remain influential in my thoughts when working on compositions. I think it is also fair to say that my classical influence remains prevalent too.”
norma
On Monday 21st March on BBC Radio 2 at 10pm,Alfie Boe has a programme about Mario.I'm really looking forward to it.(2016)
Steff
ROGER CICERO (1970 – 2016) – Jazz Musician:
A childhood memory and a missing song …
One week ago the German news announced the sudden and untimely death of the German Jazz musician Roger Cicero. He suffered a stroke and died a few days later, on 24 March 2016. Roger Cicero was born in 1970 – the same year in which I was born, so he was only 45 years old. I’ve never been interested in Jazz music so I haven’t followed his successful career, but of course I was familiar with his name (his father was a well-known Jazz pianist) and also a little bit with his music, as his songs would be aired on the radio. He also appeared on TV from time to time. Roger Cicero was very popular here and I think he had a big fan base. He was to go on tour this month (“Cicero Sings Sinatra”). When I heard the sad news about his death I recalled some association with Mario Lanza about which I had read at some point. So I browsed the internet and noticed that Roger Cicero had published his autobiography in 2010 which I understand is mainly about his favourite songs that were important in his life and had an imprinting effect on him. I was delighted to see that he devoted an entire chapter in the book to Mario Lanza.
Here’s what Cicero wrote in his autobiography:
From the autobiography “Weggefährten – Meine Songs fürs Leben” (Companions - My Songs for Life) by Roger Cicero (Rowohlt Verlag, 2010).
A special highlight was that my father owned a video set. Back then I regarded this as an incredible technological novelty. When it came to gadgets like these he was always up to date […]. The most important thing was that he had all sorts of films to play on the video player. In his apartment I would devote myself to his big archive of video cassettes, very often until deep into the night, and I would marvel with childlike fascination. There they all were, the complete old squad of entertainment in gaudily coloured Technicolor: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire whom my father adored very much, and all the others. These were all those oldies from the most glamorous Hollywood era. These were the films where still everything was possible: At the beginning there would be a normal plot and trivial dialogues, but suddenly the set would be moved away and a street with show stairs would open up on which 50 show dancers with feather boas would already eagerly wait for the protagonist to start singing. It seemed as if it was the most natural thing in the world and that was simply fantastic, especially for a child. Back then films such as these were probably the only modern way [for actors] to benefit from their prominence. Between the 1930s and the 1950s it was sort of “Dschungelcamp” (“I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here”).
In any case every reasonably well-known face had to participate. I slightly remember a scene in which they even staged a water ballet, only to embed some synchronized swimmers into the plot. Many a things were so absurd that it was even obvious to me.
I rather preferred the classic movies with the big names. There were a few that I would watch again and again, but it was the movie “The Great Caruso” that made the biggest impression on me. The film was about the life story of the legendary tenor who had an unparalleled international career. Actually it is the common story about “from rags to riches” or, in this case, from a pizza baker to a global super star. Of course all dramaturgic tricks are used and the film has it all: It brims over with grand emotions, love and pain, happiness and disappointment until the star, a chain smoker and ravaged by lung cancer, eventually collapses on stage and dies. This was pure dramatic art and I was blown away. I was especially impressed by the singing of the protagonist Mario Lanza. Little Roger was taken with him more than with anything else. Actually , I could not stand classical music at all. But then again, Mario Lanza was no true „classical singer”, at least he has never achieved great recognition among the purists. He probably couldn’t prove himself very much in concerts. At least not when it came to demanding opera arias because he was lacking a good voice technique and would hoarsen very quickly when singing – that’s at least what I was told by my dad.
Mario Lanza was regarded as a representative of the light entertainment, as a commercial [tenor] and crooner – that was true but nevertheless he had a great voice.
Tenors per se are impressive. One of the reasons is that the natural male voice actually is deeper - in the baritone range. Consequently it usually takes a lot of push and power to sing the high tenor passages whereby the sound becomes louder and more powerful.
Probably everybody is aware of this incredible sound that fills a concert hall when a tenor with all his might starts hitting a high note and, singing his heart out, holds it to the state of unconsciousness. In comedies this is the moment in which the glasses crack all the time. That is not absurd as the frequency at such a volume occasionally can quickly sound strident [“nach Eierschneider” – like an egg slicer] and be very hurtful to the ears. That is not the case with Mario Lanza: His voice is always perfectly mellifluous despite all its power. One day, when once again I was sitting like mesmerized in front of the screen, my dad, who would have an anecdote on hand about almost every musician, told me that one time they had compared Lanza’s voice with old recordings of Caruso and had found out, during performing measurements, that both [voices] resembled each other save for some tiny frequencies. A nice story, but I would not bet the farm that this is true.
The film is dominated by music, opera arias or Italian airs. As a kid I would not have stood that in a concert. But the good thing was that [in the film] all was served bit by bit so that I could easily digest the appeal of classical music.
I was especially fond of one musical number but to the present I have not been able to make out the title. It is also missing on the film soundtrack. In that particular scene Lanza as Caruso sits down at a little piano and starts serenading his beloved. It was no great aria but a simple, very romantic, Italian song. His wooing as perfect as it might have been is not really crowned with success but later in the film, as one might expect, they get together and marry.
I’ve always wanted to know what the song in this scene was called, but till this day nobody could tell me even if I have called upon real experts and have evinced great commitment. On one occasion when I was presenting the program “Klassik-Pop - et cetera” for “Deutschlandradio Kultur” and for that purpose was to put together my favourite songs, I drove the complete editorial staff crazy. I explained the scene of the film but it was of no avail. However, once I like a melody, I never forget it again. So I sang it to all the gathered expert staff at the radio station - virtually as an acoustic reminder. Afterwards everybody said that they kind of knew it, but they could not tell me its title. I did not even get on with some experts of classical music - the editorial team had telephoned them in a hurry – even though I did my best when singing the melody over the phone. It was a somewhat bizarre situation; I am used to giving interviews over the phone, telephone concerts, however, were new to me. I desperately wanted to have this song in my radio show, but I didn’t get it; there was no chance. A song by Pavarotti was chosen instead. I cannot say which one it was and I also cannot remember the melody.
Classical voices never appealed to me in a great way. Maybe it is because they are “art voices” (“Kunststimmen”) which, unfortunately, quickly sound somewhat stilted to my ears. Of course classical singers deliver an almost incredible performance and I do not want to deny that at all. However, I rather see them in rational terms. They do not touch me so very much because I simply cannot believe the performed emotions of those singers the way I would do in the case of many soul singers.
Mario Lanza is an exception. Way back, during my school holidays, my dad had to transfer the music of the film laboriously from the video cassette to an audio cassette. The sound quality was terrible, the recording was hopelessly noisy. I still remember this now but I could listen to the cassette on the way home to Berlin on my Walkman and this way I prolonged my vacation a little bit.
I lost the audio cassette eventually and I also haven’t seen “The Great Caruso” since I was eleven years old. It probably would be very enjoyable to watch it again and to revel in yearning memories of irrevocably past times. On the other side I don’t know how all those songs would sound to my ears nowadays. Maybe the film would destroy my illusion of this voice and thereby most certainly cause great harm to my fabulous childhood memories.” (Translation from German to English by Steff Walzinger)
ŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸŸ
Regarding the “mysterious” song, it was of course “Torna a Surriento.” Shortly after Roger Cicero’s autobiography had been released he was guest in the German TV talk show, “Kölner Treff” and at one point they even talked about this song. Cicero told that in the meanwhile he had been contacted by a radio host, Werner Reinke from the “Hessischer Rundfunk,” who apparently had solved the mystery. They then played a few bars of Mario Lanza singing “Torna a Surriento” over the loudspeakers, but if I am not mistaken and my ears do not fool me, it was the soundtrack recording from the “Serenade” movie. However, Cicero was swooning over Mario Lanza’s singing - “herrlich” (magnificent) “Wahnsinn” (awesome), “zum dahinschmelzen” (to melt away). He was then presented with the RCA/BMG CD “The Definitive Collection,” which if I remember correctly, has “only” the Coke Show version of the song.
However, it would be interesting to know if Cicero eventually got the “right” - namely MGM - track from someone else (I wonder if Mr. Reinke was able to provide him with that?) which of course is not easy to locate on CD (It is at least on one bootleg CD titled “The Great Caruso” by “The Sound Track Factory"). Alas, we might never know…
A video of the TV show can be seen on you-tube, but the picture and sound quality unfortunately is very poor for whatever reason. However, if you like to watch it, please follow the link below. Please start at minute 6:20; that’s where they start talking about the song and Mario Lanza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP98BAqT2fs
The attached photo of Roger Cicero is taken from his official website www.rogercicero.de and the other two photos (Roger Cicero with “The Definitive Collection” CD) are screen shots from above mentioned TV show.
Steff
