Mario Lanza Aida Triumphal March (HQ)

From Mario Lanza's last film, "For The First Time", released in 1959, the year he died...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Verdi
• Aida

[rupepill]

@VinylToVideo

Lanza's '... operatic debut, as Fenton in Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor ... 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." ...' Mr Straus was for many years the music critic of that newspaper.

Mario Lanza's voice was a great one indeed, and his singing despite the yapping of naysayers is enjoyed still. It remains positively memorable.

[VinylToVideo]

@rupepill And what noteworthy critics were in attendance of the student productions you're mentioning? No matter which way you swing it all Lanza was is a promising singer with a potentially great voice early on, and nothing more.

[rupepill]

@VinylToVideo Sorry, as much as I'd like to I can't give you the kind of break your incorrect statements might justify your receiving. Clearly, you've never read or have been unable and/or reluctant to understand the reviews of professional critics praising Lanza's performances in Madama Butterfly and also in his 1942 performances as Fenton and Rodolfo in student productions of Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor and part of Puccini's La Boheme at Tanglewood. Have a nice day.

[VinylToVideo]

@rupepill In 1948 the singer I'm referring to who already had a distinguished career in opera certainly had no reason to be jealous of Mario Lanza, a nobody whose entire operatic career consisted of a debut with a middlebrow company as Lt. Pinkerton. Give me a break.

[rupepill]

@VinylToVideo There was in my comment of course no such discourteous suggestion that the alleged singer might have lied. However, to imply as you seem to have done that singers might never be jealous of other singers outside their own voice fach or type is so naive and silly as to be laughable. Jealousy and outright warfare were vigorousy and enthusiastically practised by singers of all sorts against each other, as for example between tenor Corelli and basso Christoff in an onstage real duel.

[VinylToVideo]

@rupepill Well the singer wasn't a tenor so had no reason to lie.

[rupepill]

@VinylToVideo Just a small point, regarding your comment: "A singer who was in attendance of one of Lanza's performances in "Butterfly" in New Orleans described both his performance and volume as "just fair." I'll take the word of someone more objective over somebody who was already a fan of Lanza's." Do you truly believe that all singers are necessarily objective in voicing their supposed opinions of the voices and singing of other singers?

[rupepill]

@VinylToVideo It is , of course, for each person to decide what to accept as reliable in the matter of reports.

RCA had microphones, yes, to record the first RAH concert.

As for the allegedly non existent Google references, linking the names of Bonynge and Lanza, here is one - there are others:

' "We were both surprised by the size of the voice--we were also impressed by Lanza’s innate musicality. No doubt he could have had an outstanding operatic career." - Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland'

[VinylToVideo]

@rupepill A singer who was in attendance of one of Lanza's performances in "Butterfly" in New Orleans described both his performance and volume as "just fair." I'll take the word of someone more objective over someone who was already a fan of Lanza's. With RCA on hand, for all I know the '58 London concert was miked. I've never heard Mario Lanza and Richard Bonynge mentioned in the same sentence nor does a Google search of the two bring up any quotes or remarks made by Bonynge on Lanza.

[rupepill]

Any supposed lack of volume or squillo in the Lanza voice is unsupported by the accounts of those who heard him in concert, unamplified, in large halls. The youtube poster Ivanhoe2, for example, attended both concerts Lanza gave in London's huge Royal Albert Hall, and his lasting impression is of a splendid, powerful voice. Ivanhoe2 was at the time of those concerts a student of singing. Other contemporaries of Lanza reported similar impressions, including Richard Bonynge, the famed conductor.