My Romance

My Romance contains a selection of love songs Mario Lanza sang on The Mario Lanza Show in the early '50s, in addition to two RCA Victor recordings from 1956. The Mario Lanza Show was a Sunday-evening CBS radio program that featured Lanza and guests such as Gisele MacKenzie singing with the Ray Sinatra Orchestra, led by Frank Sinatra's second cousin. Ray Sinatra is the conductor on all of the performances here except for the two 1956 recordings. The songs are studio recordings -- not live audience takes -- so the quality is as high as Lanza's commercial recordings. The anthology isn't exclusively devoted to broadcast recordings, nor does it outwardly emphasize that aspect of the collection. Instead, it is designed to look like nothing more than a collection of love songs, which makes one wonder why Lanza's biggest hit, "Be My Love," was not included. Nonetheless, the songs that are included are romantic, even thrilling, with Lanza's powerful but subtle and well-controlled voice interpreting great songbook selections by Rodgers & Hart, Lerner & Loewe, and Jerome Kern. Despite the noncommercial origin of most of the recordings, only "All the Things You Are" is previously unreleased. ~ Greg Adams