Mario Lanza in a 1957 TV show recorded in Rome for the The Christophers (a religious group). He sings "Santa Lucia", "Because You're Mine" and "Ave Maria" (Schubert). The American tenor Mario Lanza possessed, in the opinion of Richard Tucker, “the voice of the [twentieth] century.” To successive generations of opera stars, from Carreras to Calleja, he was the singer who inspired their careers. And yet Lanza performed only two operatic roles in his short life. This biographical essay offers an ov