Customer Reviews

Mario Lanza Radio Shows 1951

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2 star:		(1)
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Mario Lanza has the greatest voice Ive ever heard. His high notes thrills me until now. He really have a golden voice better than the three tenors and others combined,.

Lanza at his best. Better than the three tenors.Lanza truly has a golden voice from bottom to top. He express the songs supervely. not stiff like the three tenors.

If you're looking for a representative collection of Lanza, then definitely give this one a miss. This is a mishmash of songs from two of the tenor's Coca-Cola Radio Shows of 1951, and none of them present the tenor at anywhere near his magnificent best. To make matters worse, only 9 of the 18 tracks actually feature Lanza; the rest are made up of mediocre orchestral and "guest singer" interludes.

Lanza's first-ever Coca-Cola Radio Show is included in its entirety. He sings Granada as his opening number, but after a good intro runs out of steam towards the end. Toselli's Serenade is reasonable enough, but the commercial version is superior. It's a similar case with Because and Be My Love. The former is sung with extraordinary gusto, but for a far more subtle version look no further than the sublime rendition featured in The Great Caruso.

Among the other selections is a badly arranged Torna a Surriento, which does not begin to compare with Lanza's 1955 version from Serenade (featured on The Legendary Tenor CD), an A Vucchella with some nice touches, but spoiled by a couple of sloppy moments, and a fun but trite Funiculi' Funicula' (in English) with lyrics imploring us to be "gay".

Save your money for far superior CDs such as When Day is Done or Opera [sic] Arias and Duets, reviewed elsewhere on this site.

When you listen to recordings of Caruso sing, it is beautiful. But when you hear the same songs by Mario Lanza, his voice simply soars above comparison.

When you hear the difference between him and the often mentioned three tenors, you cannot imagine why he is not acknowledged as simply the finest tenor of the 20th century. Thank goodness for recordings like these!