Recondita Armonia

[Derek McGovern]

We often discuss Lanza's various renditions of E Lucevan le Stelle
here, but what of that other great Tosca aria, Recondita Armonia? I
realize that E Lucevan inevitably makes the greater dramatic impact of
the two, but Recondita Armonia -- I feel -- is actually the more
difficult aria of the two to pull off (especially in stage
performances of the opera, since the tenor has to sing it before he's
barely had a chance to warm up). It goes up to a B-flat at the end (on
"Tosca"), and a tricky one at that, but from start to finish it's a
challenging little aria.

I have my firm favourite of Lanza's three recordings, of course, but
I'd love to know which of his renditions other members enjoy.

Here are the links:

1945 live radio performance "(Great Moments in Music")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_vY7dh9ak

1950 RCA studio recording

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZBu5OO2iKc

1951 Coca-Cola Radio Show recording

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MFxOWC6RDI&feature=related

And for an exhausting series of comparisons of everyone from Caruso to
Kaufmann, here's a fanatic's compilation of the ending "Tosca, sei
tu!" featuring 22 tenors. Annoyingly, they've chosen my least
favourite Lanza version to represent Mario (he's at #5 in the list),
making him sound decidedly weak and amateurish straight after Caruso!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPJ5QHTtcng

[Derek McGovern]

Recondita armonia di bellezze diverse!
È bruna Floria, l'ardente amante mia.
E te, beltade ignota,
cinta di chiome bionde!
Tu azzurro hai l'occhio,
Tosca ha l'occhio nero!

Mysterious harmony of contrasting beauty!
Floria, my ardent love, is dark-haired.
And you, beauty unknown,
have a crown of fair hair!
You have blue eyes,
Tosca's eyes are black!

L'arte nel suo mistero
le diverse bellezze insiem confonde:
ma nel ritrar costei
il mio solo pensiero,
il mio sol pensier sei tu,
Tosca, sei tu!

Art, in its mystery way
blends both beauties together:
but while I'm painting her
my only thought,
my only thought is of you,
Tosca, of you!

[Jan Hodges]

I think they are all very good but my vote goes to the 1950 RCA recording. .The 1945 version is beautifully sung especially for a 24 year old but just lacks a little in  "feeling" for the aria. Regards  Jan

[norma]

My favourite is the RCA recording.When I started to really listen to
Marios recordings ,this was the one that brought tears to my eyes
first. Regards Norma

[Vince Di Placido]

What a great recording session Mario had on the 18th of May 1950... 4
Great recordings of Tenor arias from Andrea Chenier & Tosca.
Mario's 1950 Recondita Armonia is his best, it's a great vocal sound
from Mario on all the arias that day. Magestic singing!
I find Mario became a bit of a radio crooner at times on his Coke
arias, it makes for a nice touch here & there but it's just not
appropriate really... In the context of a mixed bag half hour weekly
radio show, maybe Mario thought it made the arias more accessible?
Listening now it jars with us but really it was supposed to be a
fleeting radio performance we heard once...
I would have loved the lttle orchestral intro & the "Dammi colori!"
line as an intro to Recondita Armonia, surprising it wasn't
incorporated considering the extensive intro used on the "Come un bel
di di Maggio" take...

[Armando]

The best is the 1950 studio recording, although I have a couple of
minor quibbles with it. After singing a splendid B flat at the
conclusion of the aria, Lanza is a little strenuous on the To-sca (G)
as if he is running out of breath. I also would have liked him to stay
a little longer on the final tu (F). Other than that this is a pretty
good performance of the aria but not a great one.

The 1945 is not bad. It’s rushed and the style is a little uncertain
but one can already hear that this is a voice and a talent to be
reckoned with.

If any proof is needed on just how much Lanza had regressed
artistically by 1952, then his singing of Recondita Armonia is as good
an example as any.

The tempo, in just over 2 minutes, is too fast, the singing rushed and
uneven, Lanza breaks the line between pensier and sei tu and adds an
unnecessary sob at the end.
Even the spectacular sounding voice has a tendency to be on the open
side.

Not much to choose from as far as best arias from this period are
concerned. I only really like Testa adorata and Un tal gioco while I
find Come un bel di, Improvviso and Cielo e mar acceptable.

[Tonytenor]

I stand with Armando, Vince, Jan and Norma: It's the 1950 recording
for me without question. The vocal line is even throughout, although
I find myself agreeing with Armando in wishing Mario would have stayed
on the final "...tu." longer. But then you know, if given the time
and the ideal aural conditions, we could probably pick apart every one
of Lanza's recordings.

You know, it's occured to me on several occasions that, had Mario been
in the right shape vocally and physically, the riole of Mario
Cavaradossi would have been ideal for him. Can you imagine his
"Vittoria, vittoria!" in Act II? I saw a production of TOSCA at the
Met, a matinee I think, and the tenor was indisposed. So the stage
manager made the announcement and there were a few dissapointed opera
goers - I think the scheduled tenor was Carlo Bini but I am not sure.
Anyway, the stage manager went on to say that there was a tenor in
town who knew the role as well as the staging of this production and
he has graciously agreed to sing today. So this afternoom, the role
of Mario Cavarvadossi will be sung by Placido Domingo. Well you can
imagine the place went wild. It was a magnificent performance and I
had to laugh when he sang the "Vittoria, vittoira!" because Doming
held the note climbed up on Scarpia's long table and while still
holding the note, fell off. Pretty shmaltzy eh? I have to admit I
love it though. I can just see Lanza doing that sort of thing.

Ciao, Tony

[Derek McGovern]

I love Lanza's 1950 version. No, it's not perfect -- and apart from
the things Armando mentioned, I feel that Mario (for once) could have
done a little more with the words (the lovely "Tu azzurro hai
l'occhio" being a notable exception) -- but it's superior to quite a
few renditions I've heard. Pavarotti, for example, almost always
executed a better "Tosca, sei tu!", but invariably did little with the
words on any of the versions (live & studio) that I've heard from him.
Caruso, on the other hand, sings with much more emotion than
Pavarotti, but does quite a few dubious things (e.g. his line is
pretty "choppy" at times and he even breaks the line "le diverse
bellezze insiem confonde", as well as holding on to certain notes
longer than he should, etc) and doesn't sound in the least bit
romantic. (His intonation's also pretty suspect, though it may be the
fault of the recording.) Great B-flat, as always, but he's a bit rough
immediately after it and overdoes the "sei tu!". Definitely not a
faultless performance from old Enrico:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbT2Mdk2od0&feature=fvw

Then there's the magnificent sound of the young Carreras, who combined
beauty of voice with lovely phrasing on this aria, but just about
always struggled with the high notes. So too did Di Stefano (in fact,
he and Carreras always seem to come unstuck on the tricky "te" in the
third line "E te, beltade ignota"), though his phrasing was even
better than Carreras'.

The bottom line? It's hard to find a definitive version of this
difficult aria!

I don't like Lanza's Coke performance (surprise, surprise), but I'm
fond of his 1945 version. Although Mario's pretty tentative here,
especially at the outset, there are actually a couple of places in
this rendition before the B-flat where I feel he's superior to his
1950 version. All in all, an impressive first live radio performance!
I'm sure I would have sat up and taken note if I'd been a member of
the radio audience that evening.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Tony: I couldn't agree more that Lanza would have made a terrific
Cavaradossi (vocally & dramatically), and I can well imagine what he
would have done with the "Vittoria! Vittoria!"

What's frustrating is that Cavaradossi was one of the seven roles that
he knew (the others being Fenton, Pinkerton, Chenier, Canio, Turiddu,
and Rodolfo), and yet we don't have a decent version of the Act I Love
Duet, let alone the Act III one. All we have apart from the two arias
is a 1945 abridged version of the Act I duet with the appalling Jean
Tennyson and a slightly rough but thrilling Qual Occhio al Mondo
(recorded & filmed for Serenade, but deleted from the release print).
But I guess we could say the same about Madama Butterfly. After all,
why didn't Lanza at least record the beautiful aria Addio, Fiorito
Asil??!!

[Armando]

Hi Tony: As both you and Derek pointed out there’s no question that
Lanza would have been a splendid Cavaradossi. The part would have
fitted him like a glove.

As for picking apart everyone of Lanza’s recording, I feel it’s
important to be critical in a constructive way not only of his
recording but of those of any other artist as well.
Many are often blinded by hero worship combined with, let’s face it,
musical incompetence, so what you often hear are one eyed fans
describing every performance as “fantastic,” “the greatest” and other
superlatives. This not only does a disservice to the artist but leaves
whoever utters these absurdities open to ridicule.

Derek has given some very good examples of other tenors tackling
Recondita Armonia. The Caruso one is particularly interesting. The
renowned Caruso historians, J Freestone and H.J Drummond, in their
book ‘Enrico Caruso His recorded Legacy,’ absolutely rave about both
of Caruso’s recordings of the aria. No mention whatsoever is made
about the fact that he breaks the line in both, not only by taking a
breath between bellezze and insieme but also between sol and pensier
sei tu. This is a musical no, no, but such is their admiration for
their subject that they have been blinded by it.


And Derek, you are right in saying that Mario could have done a little
more with the words in Recondita. I should have added that to the
“quibbles” in my post.

As for Pavarotti, I think he was totally wrong for Cavaradossi.
Vocally he might just have got away with it (although the tone was a
bit thin and dry for the part) but dramatically it was beyond him.
Pavarotti was ideally suited for the repertoire of Donizetti and
Bellini. As far as Puccini is concerned he should not have ventured
beyond Rodolfo in La Boheme. And even in this role, from a purely
interpretative point of view, he leaves a lot to be desired.

[Derek McGovern]

Ciao Armando: Interesting! The fact that Messrs Freestone and Drummond
were blown away by Caruso's Recondita Armonia reinforces how much of a
sacred cow Enrico's legacy was for decades after his death. I also
find it pretty galling of this 'J. Freestone' -- assuming he's the
same J. Freestone who wrote for Gramophone magazine -- that he could
overlook all sorts of musical & stylistic mistakes on Caruso's
recording, but harp on (unfairly) about Lanza's faulty French in the
1950 Flower Song and damn his 1949 Core 'Ngrato for being "roughly
sung." In fact, apart from a good review of Mario's two RCA Chenier
recordings and grudging praise for the 1950 Addio alla Madre,
Freestone seldom had a good word to say about him. He seems to have
been blinded by his snobbery, which reveals itself all too often in
comments such as "the large and musically unsophisticated audience for
which Lanza caters," etc.

Mind you, Freestone's colleague at the Gramophone, Oliver King, was
even worse, writing of the 1950 Questa o Quella that "it is sung . . .
with such vulgarity as to make one wonder how Lanza ever reached a
recording studio, let alone the Celebrity status of one of the major
recording firms." And like Freestone, King holds Caruso up as the
paragon of all vocal artistry -- even to the point of referring to his
"divinity"! -- and can't resist a gratuitous swipe at Lanza in the
process, singling him out as as an example of how much the RCA Red
Label's standards have degenerated since Caruso's time.

I see too that King describes Lanza's Recondita Armonia as "opera for
the million and the unenlightened." No doubt the benevolent Mr. King
regarded Caruso's version as yet another example of "his supreme
artistry."

I don't mind critics pointing out the flaws in Lanza's recordings
where they actually exist, but I do have a problem with these same
people when they can't recognize a bona fide masterpiece when it's
staring them right in the face. Both Freestone & his colleague W.A.
Chislett reviewed albums containing Lanza's 1949 Che Gelida Manina,
for example, and failed to even mention the recording! Instead they
grumbled, with Freestone lamenting "the waste [in Lanza's case] of
what sometimes seems like very good raw material."

Harold Schonberg, former music critic of the New York Times, got it
right when he write that, "The test of a great critic . . . is not how
many talents he overpraises, but how many geniuses he fails to
recognize." As far as I'm concerned, Freestone and all his mates at
the Gramophone deserved "F"s!

Cheers
Derek

[Mike McAdam]

Armando and Derek: I'm so glad that you you've brought up the fawning,
reverential tones with which Enrico Caruso is mentioned in almost
"any" critics circle, past or present. Sacred Cow indeed! I have a
question: did this guy blow all away by being perhaps the first singer
to jump on Edison's gramophone invention and cannily use it to his
great advantage? Viz: be the first 'serious' singer who is out there
front and centre for the new buyers and become a de facto yardstick by
which all succeeding singers entering this new medium are judged?

My late grandmother was taken by her friend, the daughter of local
well-to-do industrialists, to see Caruso in Manchester when she was a
teenaged girl (around 1912 or 1913 I think she said?). Her and her
friend were thrilled by his singing but noted that he was more
baritonal than they expected and strained so much on his high notes
that his neck turned beet red! Interesting.
While factoring in the primitive acoustic recording equipment of this
early Century period I can only say that, after listening to Melchior,
Galli-Curci and Pertile from this same era, to name a few....Caruso
fails to impress me as a standout singer. The different outstanding
features or 'hooks' of each of the aforementioned early recording
artists is audible immediately (just as the varying timbres and styles
of Lanza, Corelli or Bjoerling are) but Caruso? Sorry, he doesn't
stand out to me and, if his name was not on my uncle's old 78 records,
I would not have been curious and would have likely moved on to listen
to someone else. Unlike his contemporaries he seems to strain for each
high note. Maybe it's the way he reaches them that doesn't appeal (the
same as Corelli's method of hitting notes always jarred on me). Hey,
ain't music a wonderful thing. We each have the different things that
grab us! Think I'll listen to the rest of my new Lady Gaga CD now ;-))
Mike

> > interpretative point of view, he leaves a lot to be desired.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Armando]

Hi Mike: No doubt Caruso’s fame owes a great deal to the invention of
the Gramophone. Having said this, I must add that his voice was
rather darkish and recorded extremely well. This, combined with the
fact that he introduced a new “modern” way of singing, as opposed to
the earlier embellished style of the likes of De Lucia, made his
recordings sell in large quantities. So, in a way, although Caruso
benefited greatly from the Gramophone he in turn made it a commercial
success.

As far as the voice is concerned, in my opinion it’s not so much the
quality or the range that is outstanding but the overall consistency
of his singing which, regardless of the occasional lapse, has an even
line combined with very good breath support. Overall, I only hear the
strain on the high notes in some of his later recordings. Caruso’s
was a short voice- top note B natural- and lets not forget that at the
time the orchestra pitch was lower than today so his top notes were
closer to a B flat and he always sang arias such as Di Quella Pira a
tone lower.

In a way, thanks mainly to his American career, Caruso has become a
myth, while a tenor of the calibre of Aureliano Pertile, who sang
primarily in Italy, is hardly known outside opera circles. Yet Pertile
is in many respects interpretatively more interesting than Caruso and
musically and technically certainly not inferior.

In arias like Che gelida manina, (sung a tone lower) for example,
Caruso’s delivery compared not only to Pertile but to many other
tenors is quite perfunctory- no poetry at all.

In conclusion, I feel that Caruso was a great singer but that one
should not be blinded by the myth since not everything he sang stands
up to close scrutiny.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Mike and Armando: I find the whole Caruso myth fascinating. In
review after review of Lanza's albums in the 1950s, for example, we're
told that Mario "is no Caruso" -- and "never will be." Talk about
damning a young singer's potential before he's barely started. Time
magazine did its bit too, referring to the "quiet opinion" of Dorothy
Caruso -- a woman who by her own admission knew nothing about singing
or opera -- that Lanza was unworthy of portraying her husband in the
MGM film. And even when a critic from Gramophone grudgingly implies
that -- just maybe -- Lanza's 1949 Mattinata is a reasonable
recording, he can't resist adding that, "[Mario] puts nothing into it
that Caruso did not in his 1904 version."

Mind you, it's not just Caruso's artistry that Lanza can never aspire
to in these 1950s critics' declarations; Mario's even compared
unfavourably to Tauber in a review of his first Student Prince album.

Well, Lanza may have been no Caruso (or Tauber), but by the same
token, Caruso was no Lanza. No, we can't compare their careers, but if
it's voices we're comparing, then in terms of colour and range, Caruso
was clearly not the miracle of nature that Lanza was.

I was interested in Armando's comments about Pertile, whom I think
actually influenced Mario just as much as Caruso. Back in 1982,
Carreras made the point that stylistically, at least, Pertile was a
much more "modern" singer than Caruso -- and that for this reason he
preferred to listen to the former over the latter.

It's a shame Pertile has been sidelined in this critical obsession
with Caruso. I'm not saying that Caruso doesn't deserve a significant
place in musical history, but to put him on a God-like pedestal that
no other singer can ever share (let alone surpass) is just plain
absurd.

Cheers
Derek

[zsazsa]

Hi Derek,
thank you very much for your great post, it is so very, very true! It
must have been told, you talkes from my heart when you say: `but put
him (Caruso) on a God-like pedestal that no other singer can share
(let alone surpass) is just plain absurd.` Very well said and thanks
for that!
Have a great weekend and coming week.
Cheers Susan

[Maria Luísa]

I agree absolutely with both of you (Mike and Derek) about what you
wrote in respect to Caruso's voice versus Mario's. Mario was a much
more of a tenor than Caruso was I'm sorry to say. In my modest opinion
and I read several times before a few members pointing out this
particular, Caruso was more of a baritone than a tenor I dare say.

I listen to Caruso's voice in youtube and there is an ocean of
difference from Mario's. Of course Caruso had a beautiful tone of
voice, may be even great, but "great" for "his time" when there were
very few opera singers and even less the so called greats I believe.
Even today, regardless of the bad sound recordings' system of his
time, one can tell he was an excellent opera singer, but he had not
the same enormous, mesmerising voice Mario had.

Caruso's voice neither had the magnetic, shivering type of Mario's nor
its crystal like sound (can't find the proper words to explain it
better) not to speak of its astonishing range. Mario possessed without
a shadow of a doubt the most beautiful tone of voice and
simultaneously the most powerful one of the last century and probably
for many to come.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Luísa: Sorry -- I can't agree with you that Lanza had "the most
powerful [voice] of the last century and probably for many to come."

While's there's no doubt that he had a powerful voice, I think we need
to be careful about getting carried away in our enthusiasm here. Lanza
was first and foremost a lirico spinto tenor. He didn't have the
theatre-shaking power of, say, Mario Del Monaco, a dramatic tenor, nor
did he have a more powerful voice than Richard Tucker. There are many
other examples. Caruso also had a very powerful voice as well --
"especially impressive in the F-natural to B-flat range," as Domingo
has written. Did Caruso have a more powerful voice than Lanza? Quite
possibly, though I'd say that by 1958/59, Mario's voice would have
rivalled Enrico's in that department. (Just listen to the 1959
Serenata, for example.)

What Lanza had in abundance, though, was squillo -- that bell-like
ringing quality that enabled him to project his voice thrillingly even
in the most unforgiving of venues. As one fellow who heard him live in
1958 told me:

"I knew that something marvellous happened past a certain point in
Lanza's range where the voice took on a ringing, like a sword striking
an anvil. It's where the vibrato increases under pressure and the
sound carries a sense of urgency and excitement. This was always goose-
bump time for me and still is."

For me, it is a combination of things that make the Lanza voice
extraordinary. Above all, there's that unique colour ("a timbre that
other singers . . . would kill for" -- critic Henry Foley), coupled
with its perfect equalization from top to bottom (as Callinicos
pointed out, at no point throughout his vocal registers did Lanza's
voice have any unpleasant edge to it; everything was rich and
round), ample power, excellent range (almost two and a half octaves),
and a very exciting degree of squillo. Throw in Lanza's qualities as a
singer (intelligence, musicality, poetry, and the ability to live the
words and "speak" to the listener in a highly personal way), and you
have one heck of a vocal package.

While other tenors have possessed many of these qualities, on record,
at least (for who knows what great vocal talents existed in the pre-
phonograph period), there is not a single one to my knowledge who
possesses *all* of them.

That doesn't mean that Lanza was a perfect singer -- not by any
stretch of the imagination. This is where I have a major problem with
so many Lanza fans, who, like the one-eyed fans of any artist,
regularly declare on YouTube (or wherever) that everything he recorded
was "the best ever" performance. Then there's that silly utterance
that I often come across on the various fan forums: "Even on his worst
day, Lanza was still better than any other tenor on his best day."
It's statements like these that do Lanza's legacy no favours
whatsoever.

For in actual fact, there were occasions (eg, the Lanza on Broadway
and on some of the Coke Shows) when Lanza's singing was *worse* than
that of any great singer on record. (Oh, how I wish more Lanza fans
could tell the difference between his bad vocal days and his great
ones!) But as I've said many times, artists should be judged by their
successes, not their disasters. And, happily, in Mario's case, his
triumphs far outweigh his failures.

Cheers
Derek

[Shawn]

"While's there's no doubt that he had a powerful voice, I think we
need
to be careful about getting carried away in our enthusiasm here. Lanza
was first and foremost a lirico spinto tenor. He didn't have the
theatre-shaking power of, say, Mario Del Monaco, a dramatic tenor, nor
did he have a more powerful voice than Richard Tucker. There are many
other examples. Caruso also had a very powerful voice as well --
"especially impressive in the F-natural to B-flat range," as Domingo
has written. Did Caruso have a more powerful voice than Lanza? Quite
possibly, though I'd say that by 1958/59, Mario's voice would have
rivalled Enrico's in that department. (Just listen to the 1959

Serenata, for example.) For me, it is a combination of things that

make the Lanza voice
extraordinary. Above all, there's that unique colour ("a timbre that
other singers . . . would kill for" -- critic Henry Foley), coupled
with its perfect equalization from top to bottom (as Callinicos
pointed out, at no point throughout his vocal registers did Lanza's
voice have any unpleasant edge to it; everything was rich and
round), ample power, excellent range (almost two and a half octaves),
and a very exciting degree of squillo. Throw in Lanza's qualities as a
singer (intelligence, musicality, poetry, and the ability to live the
words and "speak" to the listener in a highly personal way), and you
have one heck of a vocal package."

Very well said. I usually don't post just to say "I agree" ( ha ha )
but that is the most well articulated response to this issue I've
heard; and I do completely concur that it was Mario's combination of
gifts that makes him remarkable- many other tenors surpass him in one
vocal 'department' but none (that I have heard) equal him in all.

[Jan Hodges]

Shawn wrote <many other tenors surpass him in one Vocal 'department' but none (that I have heard) equal him in all>   Well I wouldn't quite agree here. I would say "several" tenors may have surpassed him in one department or another. In my opinion there are at least two areas where he has never been surpassed and the they are vocal beauty and interpretive skills. Jan

[Shawn]

Hi Jan:

I take your point and actually, I may have spoke a bit too broadly. I
think there were a large number of tenors more 'powerful' than Lanza
simply in terms of being louder, and there were also plenty who had
more agile voices for the likes of Mozart and Donizetti. 'Tenor'
encompasses so much. But I agree that there are very, very few tenors
who equal Lanza in vocal beauty. Only Wunderlich and a couple others
even come to mind for me (although this is somewhat a matter of
taste.) Thanks.

[Jan Hodges]

Hi Shawn,     I agree there may be a couple of tenors who are Lanza's equal in vocal beauty eg.  Wunderlich but I don't think any are more beautiful. If we include voices other than tenor then this widens the scope somewhat. I am particularly partial to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Jan

[Maria Luísa]

Beautiful words and didactic too Derek and very much appreciated. Of
course I agree that Mario had a few bad recordings (hardly to believe
in a man with "that" voice, but excusable in face of the several
serious periods he crossed in life) either because of problems of his
voice when he sang them or the conducting or due to the bad quality of
the lyrics or the three altogether.

I can't understand how Mario, being as intelligent as he was, who knew
rather well the true value of his extraordinary voice (didn't he say
one day that his throat was worth millions and also that his voice was
bigger than Caruso's or still that he sang better than Caruso, or
something next to this? - if he did I agree totally with him) agreed
to sing such poor songs, not to call them filthiness (hope this is not
too strong a word) like, for example, Biddy Biddy Boom Boom, Pineapple
Pickers or Ay Lee Ay Loo? I can't stand them, I only listen to them
very rarely and only because of his beautiful tone of voice.

Of course I agree there were great tenors, not only Mario. Beautiful
voices like Corelli's, Del Monaco's, Di Stefano's, A. Kraus',
Bjorling's, P. Domingo's, Carreras', Pavarotti's and the list could go
on and on, will be forever registered as greats in the history of Bel
Canto. But none of these had that "something extra special" that made
Mario unique, or as you so well put it, his "intelligence,
musicality, poetry and the ability to live the words and 'speak' to
the listener in a highly personal way" and as you also pointed out his
"color" (timbre) and "perfect phrasing" . If you have all these
qualities in a soul tenor then that is all he needs to become one of
the greatest tenors of all times.

Had Mario lived long enough and had he wished or had the enough will
power to pursuit and fulfil a long opera career, with that powerful,
beautiful voice of his, I'm sure that he would have become in a very
short period of time one of the greatest opera singers of his time if
not the greatest and hopefully we were all here to testify such deed.
Not that there weren't others equally greats, of course there were,
but NOT with the whole rare exceptional qualities Mario had in himself
like a true Blessing from Heaven. This independently of the few bad
recordings he made(those are just to forget) and probably still would
do a few more along his professional life.

But then I suppose all great tenors and popular singers past and
present sometimes during their professional lives did wrong repertoire
choices and bad singing performances and surely they must have them
nailed as fish-bones in their throats like most certainly Mario had
them also. Mario was not the only one who made wrong choices in songs,
films and did bad recordings during his life - he must have had that
perception quite well - and not would those be certainly the last ones
he did had he lived longer and had he had a successful career in
opera, popular songs and films which he surely would, but then all the
other tenors, actors and singers also did sometimes awful choices in
their professional lives and keep doing them.

However neither of this takes away one bit of Mario's extraordinary
value as a fantastic tenor nor does it his total delivery and extreme
passion towards his exacting profession. Thanks again Derek.

[Maria Luísa]

Sorry for the title songs being wrongly spelled. Thanks.

[leeann]

Hi, Mike.

I loved the question you raised about whether the gramophone had
anything to do Caruso's iconic status. From the broadest perspective,
that issue sort of tackles a key part of the question about how and
why many people become celebrities at all. There's certainly a huge
repository of positive and negative material written about Caruso's
voice and its affect on audiences, his opera contemporaries, coaches--
the gamut--besides his own apparently extraordinarily prolific
correspondence and paper trail. It's interesting how many critics
accounts alone from those first years in the States address a vocal
charisma that surprised. They often seem to mention how he entranced
his audience despite his unprepossessing appearance and a wooden
approach to the physicality of acting.

But I also think Caruso was generally pretty astute about managing his
own public image, even the response to 'scandals', and he seems to
have been a man who was proverbially, "in the right place at the right
time." Caruso's era marked the beginning of the entertainment
business as an organized, packaged, promoted industry, abetted by the
increased circulation and availability of newspapers and magazines on
a national scale. Promoting celebrities fed growing public interest--
especially because people actually began to have greater flexible
leisure time and the appetite for information about public figures
increased everybody's bottom line--and the gramophone was part of the
serendipity. It kind of helped too, I think, that in the US, the
entertainment and cultural industry--everything from classical to
vaudeville--pretty much started in New York, so there was sort of
centrality to building and encouraging celebrity status through the
dissemination of photographs, interviews, and stories. And clearly,
Caruso knew how to use those channels.

I've read that Caruso was the first international celebrity whose fame
actually was driven by record sales! He recorded for the Victor
Talking Machine Company label exclusively, and that was good for
Caruso and good for Victor--like radio and television later, the
gramophone was a pretty democratic medium and "everybody" owned one,
regardless of economic status. The public began to associate artists
like Caruso with the record label. The gramophone, combined with
Caruso's own personality and public outreach--must have been a major
factor to his fame beyond golden circle of the live opera audience .

It was kind of fun to read this article from Opera News where
prominent opera stars were asked "What's the greatest voice you ever
heard?" I didn't do an actual count, but I have the impression as
many people cited Lanza as Caruso--at least it was pretty close!

http://www.operanews.com/operanews/templates/content.aspx?id=12150

Best, lee Ann

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lee Ann: That's a great post you've written above (hope Mike read
it!), and I think you've put your finger on many of the reasons for
Caruso's extraordinary hold on the popular imagination.

It's a shame tenor Joseph Calleja wasn't on the scene when Opera News
interviewed those prominent opera singers about greatest voices. Back
in 2006, he was asked by an interviewer, "Which comment on music do
you never wish to hear again?" Calleja answered:

"May I be allowed two in this case: 1. [The use of the term]
Crossover. This has been done by all the greats starting from Caruso,
Schipa, Gigli, etc. [...] 2. Last but not least -- that Mario Lanza
didn't have a voice fit for opera. It remains to date one of the most
incredible and complete tenor voices I have ever heard."

Bravo, Mr. Calleja!

[leeann]

Dear Mike,

I ran across an article today from the May 12, 1910 New York Times, and  it reminded me of this thread and the conversation about the gramophone. I'm attaching it to test the tools of the new forum, but the gist of it is an accounting of the incomes of the European singers at the Met as they sailed home at the end of the season. The reporter estimates that one-quarter of Caruso's earnings that year came from record sales!  So we have a bit of quantification about the confluence of music, technology, and a man who, intuitively or with forethought, understood how to use the media of his times.

And further proof of this certainly would be his appearance in the press--this is only one of what is likely hundreds of articles about Enrico Caruso that highlight his personal and professional life. A gold mine  Best Lee Ann

[Lanzafan]

First and foremost I am in no way an expert on opera, but for me it has to be the 1950 recording. He sounds more relaxed, and sounds like he is singing with more of an open throat. 1945 recording is very good especially for a 24 year old, but his voice is perhaps a tiny bit too pushed. As for 1951 recording I agree with Armando, there sounds to be a little regression, perhaps to the 45 version. Perhaps it just comes down to the sound they wanted him to produce on that particular day.

[Derek McGovern]

Hi Lanzafan (Steve, isn't it?): Nice to hear from you.

I'm sure Lanza was encouraged to sing operatic arias on his 1951-52 radio show in a croony, less operatic style. After all, it's hard to imagine his sponsors, the Coca-Cola company, being concerned with doing justice to the great operatic composers! Popular ditties were what they would have desired from Lanza -- as indeed the majority of his fans (both then and now) wanted to hear from him.

It certainly didn't help that Ray Sinatra (who conducted all of the arias performed on the first nine months of the show) was not an operatic conductor, and that his orchestra was often woefully under-rehearsed. Callinicos, who took over the conducting of arias in March 1952, didn't fare much better. Then there were the time constraints, not only in terms of rehearsal time, but with regard to how long a particular number could be. But Mario really should have put his foot down and refused to sing arias such as "Che Gelida Manina" and the "Lamento di Federico" at breakneck speed just to accommodate those time limits. Better still, he should have had his coach Spadoni on hand in the studio to correct him on stylistic matters. I guess we're lucky that Lanza didn't sing the Otello Monologue on the Coke Show, as I can just imagine how that would have ended up, with a minute shaved off its usual length and perhaps an unwritten flourish from Sinatra (as he'd done, disastrously, on the end of the Coke "Questa o Quella")!

I often read laments from fans on the other Lanza forums that Mario didn't sing, say, "Addio Fiorito Asil" (from Madama Butterfly), "Nessun Dorma" or "Ch'Ella Mi Creda" (from La Fanciulla del West) on his Coke Show. But what I wish is that he'd recorded all of these arias (and dozens of others) away from the second-rate conditions that he was working in then, and in the right artistic circumstances and frame of mind. Imagine, for example, what Lanza could have achieved on an all-operatic album with the likes of Peter Herman Adler, or, better still, Franco Ferrara.

Cheers
Derek



 

[Derek McGovern]

I've been listening to Lanza's 1950 version of "Recondita armonia" a lot lately, so thought I'd revive this excellent thread. I'm also attaching the reproduction I've been listening to of this recording: an excellent transfer from vinyl that a dear friend sent me. It's gorgeous! So much warmer than what one hears on BMG's rather sterile-sounding Great Caruso/Caruso Favorites CD.