Out of curiosity, I did an online search today for the libretto of Giordano's seldom-heard opera
Madame Sans-Gêne (1915). I wanted to find out much of the aria "Questa Tua Bocca Profumata e Pura" from this opera Lanza actually sings on his exciting (if a little rough!) 1952 home recording, which is featured on our main site
here.
The answer is exactly half. Mario starts on line five (see beginning of bold section below) with "Sapor d’infanzia e di malinconia," stops to curse (?!) for a moment after "paese" five lines later, and then continues with the rather sharply rendered "l’eco dei dì passati!/ E li rivivo teco." But here's where it gets interesting: after stopping again---this time to complain about the lights---he returns with what I (and probably most other people similarly unfamiliar with the opera) had always assumed to be the ending to the aria. And yet those powerful final lines are not from the aria---at least not from what I can make out---nor have I managed to find them in the rest of the libretto! For example, I hear what sounds like "ora resterai da sol" at the end (though my ears could be fooling me).
So if the ending is not from
Madame Sans-Gêne, then what opera
is it from? Nothing rings a bell for me. Don't tell me we have another "unknown aria" on our hands to rival
this baffling one! :)
Here's a link to the entire libretto of Madame Sans-Gêne for anyone who's interested (or has sharper eyes than mine). The role that Lanza sings, by the way, is that of the sergeant/then Duke Lefebvre:
Questa tua bocca profumata e pura
che la mia di baciar non è mai sazia,
mi fa pensare ai frutti dell’Alsazia
che il natio sol nell’orto mio matura.
Sapor d’infanzia e di malinconia
mi scende al cuore, e nel pensier ridesta
la casa, il campo, la chiesetta in festa
e le campane dell’Avemaria!
Or nelle tue parole cerco e ascolto
l’accento noto del paese, l’eco
dei dì passati! E li rivivo teco,
e cerco la mia patria sul tuo volto!
Laggiù in Alsazia, noi pensammo un dì
andar vecchietti, in pace, a chiuder gli occhi!
I must say, by the way, that it's a credit to Lanza that he wasn't just interested in singing the familiar operatic "lollipops," as one commentator rather sneeringly once put it.
Cheers
Derek