Mario Lanza - Legacy

Legacy

Lanza's brief career covered opera, radio, concerts, recordings and motion pictures. He was the first RCA Victor Red Seal artist to win a gold disc and the first artist to sell 2 1/2 million albums. This highly influential performer has been credited with inspiring successive generations of other opera singers, including Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci and José Carréras. Singers with seemingly different backgrounds and influences were also inspired by him, even including his RCA Victor label-mate Elvis Presley.

Lanza was referred to by some sources as the "new Caruso" after his "instant success" in Hollywood films, while MGM hoped he would become the movie studio's "singing Clark Gable" for his good looks and powerful voice.

In 1994, outstanding tenor José Carréras paid tribute to Lanza during a worldwide concert tour, saying of him, "If I'm an opera singer, it's thanks to Mario Lanza." His equally outstanding colleague Plácido Domingo echoed these comments in a 2009 CBS interview with, "Lanza's passion and the way his voice sounds are what made me sing opera. I actually owe my love for opera ... to a kid from Philadelphia."

Even today "the magnitude of his contribution to popular music is still hotly debated," and because he appeared on the operatic stage only twice, many critics feel that he needed to have had more "operatic quality time" in major theaters before he could be considered a star of that art form. His films, especially The Great Caruso, influenced numerous future opera stars, including Joseph Calléja, José Carréras, Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti. According to opera historian Clyde McCants, "Of all the Hollywood singers who performed operatic music . . . the one who made the greatest impact was Mario Lanza." Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper concluded that "there had never been anyone like Mario, and I doubt whether we shall ever see his like again".