Mario Lanza: Don't Forget Me

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Music reviews of Mario Lanza: Don't Forget Me

Music Review: Rough diamond
Rating: 3 Stars

Now the criticism: all of the performances contained here come from Lanza's wildly erratic Coca-Cola Radio Show of 1951-52. To be sure, these weekly performances yielded some amazing results, but sadly only a handful of these are to be found on this disk. (For a much more consistent "Coke" CD, check out the excellent When Day is Done.) The real reason for the inconsistency in performance was lack of time, and often Lanza was not sufficiently familiar with the material. The arrangements certainly didn't help, with the emphasis on big endings and impossibly high keys. Having said that, I doubt that any other tenor in similar circumstances could have produced as many dazzling performances as Lanza achieved.

Duds first: Diane is a dreadful rendition, and let's hope it never resurfaces on any other compendiums. The Neapolitan songs are rough - very rough in the case of Santa Lucia Luntana and Canta Pe Me - and vastly superior performances (and arrangements) of these and others can be found on Lanza's magnificent Mario! Lanza At His Best CD. O Paradiso is a decidedly inferior effort (especially compared to the tenor's rendition in the 1955 movie Serenade) and suffers from appalling orchestral accompaniment. The two songs from The Student Prince (Serenade and Deep in My Heart) suffer badly in comparison with Lanza's magnificent soundtrack, recorded the same year. Here both performances are rushed and unpolished, with a totally unneccesary "scream" on the word "dream" at the conclusion of Deep in My Heart. You'll Never Walk Alone is a ho-hum effort, and there is a far better take of this number to be found on the CD of the same title.

For my money, the CD's strengths are the magnificent Addio Alla Madre (a performance that rivals Lanza's celebrated 1950 recording and has an on-key ending this time!); a sensitive rendition of O Tu Che In Seno Agli Angeli (surely one of the most difficult arias in the repertoire); the beautifully realized Your Eyes Have Told Me So; a cheeky and exciting La Danza; and a far more delicate reading of Parmi Veder Le Lagrime than his 1950 commercial rendition.

The sound is extremely bright (sometimes excessively so) at the expense of Lanza's mellow timbre, but there is a real sense of presence throughout. As one Lanza admirer remarked on first hearing this disk: "This is a fantasy voice." And indeed it is. Buy this disk for its highlights and revel in the tenor's exuberant genius.

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