Mario Lanza still has the greatest high C

Orlando R. Barone

is the author of "Your Voice Is Your Business"

I was 8 years old or so when my father brought home the battered 45 r.p.m. record. "Here," he said. "Grandmom doesn't want it." I squinted at the sad, faded label and knew at once that the reproduction would be full of the crackly static that afflicts such records in their senility. I read the label.

"Vesti la Giubba," it said unhelpfully. The artist was "Mario Lanza, tenor." I flipped the top of my sister's tiny and tinny player, and played it - about three dozen times.

Thus my passion for Italian opera coincided with a half-century love affair with that artist, Mario Lanza, who I would soon discover was not only American but a proud native of South Philly. At his height, he was by far the best-known operatic tenor in the world and inspired the careers of Pavarotti, Domingo, Carreras, and many others. Yet Lanza almost never sang a complete opera on stage or on record.

He actually had an award-winning classical record ("Che Gelida Manina" from La Boheme) and a million-selling pop single ("Be My Love" from his movie Toast of New Orleans) on sale at the same time, a feat never matched. Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra were avid fans, which tells you something about the man's range. Composer Sammy Cahn spoke of Lanza's soft-pedal and loud-pedal, his astounding ability to produce an ethereally sweet sound and follow it up with a high C that shook the rafters.

You might not know the name Mario Lanza, but you should. He died 50 years ago this coming Wednesday, at age 38. His childhood home at 636 Christian St. sat atop the family grocery store. It's gone now, but around the corner is St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi Church, where he was baptized and sang as a boy, and next door, at 712 Montrose St., is the small but interesting Mario Lanza Museum.

He was born in that seething pocket of Philadelphia still called Little Italy. His friends knew him as Freddy Cocozza. He drove family members crazy as he listened interminably to Caruso and other tenors on his Papa's old Victorola. At age 16, he discovered his own voice, and his mom, whose maiden name was Maria Lanza, saw to it that he received competent training. He changed his name to Mario Lanza and was headed for a terrific career in opera. If he looked like a tenor instead of a movie star, he would have gone that route.

Instead Louis B. Mayer "discovered" him at a 1947 concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and the movie-going public soon declared him an unqualified sensation. In movie palaces around the country people actually stood and cheered after he sang the aria "Celeste Aida" in his first motion picture, That Midnight Kiss. It was an amazing breakthrough. MGM had considered it extremely risky to interrupt a musical with a complete operatic aria, but Lanza fought for its inclusion.

He was a fighter all the way - did I mention where he grew up? He was also an eater and something of a drinker; weight gain and bouts of heavy imbibing exacted a big toll, but he never stopped fighting for quality in his movies, insisting that the public would respond to good music tastefully presented.

He was right; his best picture, The Great Caruso, broke box office records in 1951, although it featured more than a dozen Italian arias and songs. Unfortunately, his career foundered after that, and the reasons were complicated. What was not complicated was his gradual physical decline because of his extreme weight fluctuations, drinking, stress, and a probable predisposition to heart disease. He died in a Rome hospital.

Aside from a handful of movie musicals, Lanza left us a vast recorded legacy, and in the YouTube era you have no excuse for not having heard this astonishing tenor.

Search "Lanza, 'Golden Days,' " and experience the sweetest voice that can fairly be called masculine, along with the most masculine high notes you'll ever hear.

Follow it up with that million-seller, "Be My Love," and learn what a high C should sound like. By now you'll notice his English diction is as good as Ella Fitzgerald's, his voice is placed perfectly, and the excess of talent is very nearly unimaginable.

Now, try these: "Song of India," "The Lord's Prayer," and "Because." Next, listen to "Vesti la Giuba," my introduction to Mario. By then, quite possibly, the sheer power and beauty of Lanza's incomparable voice will have enthralled you as it did that awestruck 8-year-old boy more than a half-century ago.