Mario Lanza (31 January 1921 ? 7 October 1959) was an American operatic tenor and Hollywood movie star who enjoyed success in the 1950s. His voice was considered by many to rival that of Enrico Caruso, whom Lanza portrayed in the 1951 film The Great Caruso. Lanza was able to sing all types of music. While his highly emotional style was not universally praised by critics, he was immensely popular and his many recordings are still prized today.
Operatic career:
Born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was exposed to opera and singing at a young age, and by the age of 16 his vocal talent became apparent. Starting out in local operatic productions in Philadelphia, he later came to the attention of conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who provided young Cocozza with a full student scholarship to the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. Koussevitzky would later tell Lanza that, "Yours is a voice such as is heard once in a hundred years."
His operatic debut, as Fenton in Otto Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor, was at Tanglewood on August 7, 1942, after just six weeks of study with conductors Boris Goldovsky and Leonard
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