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Mario Lanza

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Mario Lanza as Lt. Pinkerton from Madama Butterfly. Lanza played Pinkerton at the New Orleans Opera in 1948.

Mario Lanza (31 January 1921 – 7 October 1959) was an American tenor and Hollywood movie star who enjoyed success in the late 1940s and 1950s. His voice was considered by some to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. Lanza was able to sing all types of music. While his highly emotional style was not always universally praised by critics, he was immensely popular and his many recordings are still prized today.

Operatic career

Born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was exposed to opera and singing at a young age, and by the age of 16 his vocal talent became apparent. His father Antonio Cocozza was born in Filignano, Italy and came to the United States at age 16. Starting out in local operatic productions in Philadelphia, he later came to the attention of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who provided young Cocozza with a full student scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. Koussevitzky would later tell Lanza that, "Yours is a voice such as is heard once in a hundred years."

His operatic debut, as Fenton in Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, was at Tanglewood on August 7, 1942, after studying with conductors Boris Goldovsky and Leonard Bernstein. It was here that Cocozza adopted the stage name Mario Lanza, which is the masculine version of his mother’s name. His performances at Tanglewood won him critical acclaim, with Noel Straus of The New York Times hailing the 21-year-old tenor as having "few equals among tenors of the day in terms of quality, warmth, and power."

His operatic career was interrupted by World War II, when he was assigned to Special Services in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He appeared on the wartime shows On the Beam and Winged Victory while in the Air Corps. He also appeared in the film version of the latter (albeit as an unrecognizable member of the chorus).

He resumed his singing career in October 1945 on the CBS radio program Great Moments in Music, where he made six appearances singing various operatic selections. He later studied under Enrico Rosati for fifteen months, then embarked on an 86-concert tour of the United States, Canada and Mexico between July 1947 and May 1948 with George London and Frances Yeend. In April 1948, he sang Pinkerton in the New Orleans Opera's Madama Butterfly (conducted by Walter Herbert) to great acclaim. A concert at the Hollywood Bowl brought Lanza to the attention of MGM's Louis B. Mayer, who signed Lanza to a seven-year film contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. This would prove to be a turning point in the young singer's career.

Film career

File:LanzaGrayson.jpg
Mario Lanza as Lt. Pinkerton and Kathryn Grayson as Cio-Cio San of Madama Butterfly in their 1950 picture The Toast of New Orleans.

MGM's contract with Lanza required him to commit to the studio for six months, and at first Lanza was able to combine his film career with his operatic one, singing two acclaimed performances as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly for the New Orleans Opera Association in April 1948. He also continued to perform in concert, both in solo appearances and as part of the Bel Canto Trio with George London and Frances Yeend. In May 1949, he made his first commercial recordings with RCA Victor. However, his first two starring films, That Midnight Kiss and The Toast of New Orleans, were very successful, as was his recording career, and Lanza's fame increased dramatically.

In 1951, Lanza portrayed Enrico Caruso in The Great Caruso, which proved to be an astonishing success. At the same time, his popularity exposed Lanza to intense criticism by some music critics, including those who had praised his work years earlier.

In 1952, Lanza was dismissed by MGM after he had pre-recorded the songs for The Student Prince. The reason most frequently cited for his dismissal in the tabloid press at the time was that Lanza's recurring weight problem had made it impossible for him to fit into the costumes of the Prince. However, as his biographers Cesari and Mannering have established, Lanza was not overweight at the beginning of the production, and it was, in fact, a disagreement with director Curtis Bernhardt over Lanza's singing of one of the songs in the film that led to Lanza walking off the set. MGM refused to replace Bernhardt, and the film was subsequently made with actor Edmund Purdom miming to Lanza's vocals. Ironically, the eventual director of the film was Richard Thorpe, the same man whom Lanza had pleaded with MGM to replace Bernhardt, and with whom the tenor had enjoyed an excellent working relationship on The Great Caruso.

Depressed by his dismissal, and with his self-confidence severely undermined, Lanza became a virtual recluse for more than a year, frequently seeking refuge in alcoholic binges. During this period Lanza also came very close to bankruptcy as a result of poor investment decisions made by his former manager, and his lavish spending habits left him owing about $250,000 in back taxes to the IRS.

He returned to an active film career in 1955 in Serenade. However, despite its strong musical content, it was not as successful as his previous films. Lanza then moved to Rome, Italy in May 1957, where he worked on the film Seven Hills of Rome and returned to live performing in a series of acclaimed concerts throughout Britain, Ireland and the European Continent. Despite failing health, which resulted in a number of cancellations during this period, Lanza continued to receive offers for operatic appearances, concerts, and films.

Tenor Richard Tucker speaking with Mario Lanza in 1958 at Tucker's Covent Garden debut.

In late August 1958, he made a number of operatic recordings at the Rome Opera House for the soundtrack of what would turn out to be his final film, For the First Time. Here, he came into contact with the Artistic Director of the Rome Opera, Riccardo Vitale, who reportedly offered him the role of Canio in Pagliacci in the theater's 1960/61 season. At the same time, however, his health continued to decline, with the tenor suffering from a variety of ailments, including phlebitis and acute high blood pressure. The old habits of overeating and crash dieting, coupled with his binge drinking, compounded his problems. The following year, in April 1959, Lanza suffered a minor heart attack, followed by double pneumonia in August. He died in Rome in October of that year at the age of 38 from a pulmonary embolism. His widow, Betty, moved back to Hollywood with their four children but used barbiturates to commit suicide five months later; Marc, the younger of their two sons died in 1993 of a heart attack at the age of 37.

Lanza's short career covered opera, radio, concerts, recordings, and motion pictures. He was the first artist for RCA Victor Red Seal to receive a gold disc. He was also the first artist to sell two and half million albums. A highly influential artist, Lanza has been credited with inspiring the careers of successive generations of opera singers, including Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci and Jose Carreras, as well as those of singers with seemingly different backgrounds, and influences, his RCA Victor label-mate Elvis Presley being the most notable example. In 1994, tenor José Carreras paid tribute to Lanza in a worldwide concert tour, saying of him, "If I'm an opera singer, it's thanks to Mario Lanza."

Filmography

Mario Lanza as Giuseppe Verdi's Otello.

Select recordings

References

  • Cesari, Armando. Mario Lanza: An American Tragedy (Fort Worth: Baskerville, 2004). (ISBN 1-880909-66-9)
  • Callinicos, Constantine. "The Mario Lanza Story" (New York, NY, 1960). (Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-12480)
  • Mannering, Derek. "Mario Lanza: Singing to the Gods" (Great Britain, 2001) (ISBN 0-7090-6876-X)
  • Lanza, Damon & Dolfi, Bob. "Be My Love: A Celebration of Mario Lanza" (Chicago, IL, 1999) (ISBN 1-56625-129-X)
  • Bessette, Roland L. "Mario Lanza: Tenor In Exile" (Portland, OR) (ISBN 1-57467-044-1)
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