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Caruso himself, at any rate, never commanded the hysterical adulation that swamped Lanza last winter and spring on his latest concert tour. Sam Weiler has a nightmarish memory of a fracturing scene in Scranton, Pa., where the tour began: "We get to the department store [to autograph record albums], and we can't get through the people. They make an aisle for us. There were women everywhere. You couldn't move. They were trampling merchandise, standing on washing machines, on counters, everywhere. Some women yelled, 'Hey, Mario, be my love!' They started shoving. The Fire Department finally had to get them out. The ceiling was beginning to shake."
In Baltimore, the fans broke a plateglass window trying to get to Mario. In Pittsburgh, where 2,000 paid just to hear him rehearse, two girls had to be taken to the hospital. Says Lanza: "They go for your handkerchief. They go for your buttons. They rip at your lapels. They try to kiss you. Oh, how they try to kiss you! I love every minute of it." While the police grappled with mobs that tore detectives' badges off in their frenzy to reach their idol, Lanza collected an average of $4,530 from box offices in each of 22 cities.
American Tragedy? On his next tour, now being booked for the winter, he will sing only in arenas and stadiums that can hold enough people to permit a take between $15,000 and $20,000 for each concert. His other plans are grandly hazy. He is tempted by a $250,000 offer to tour in Argentina. He sometimes speaks vaguely of accepting an offer to appear at Milan's famed La Scala, where he would like to sing Andrea Chenier, one of the twelve operatic roles he has learned. He is even vaguer about the great day when he may be ready to sing at the Met (top fee: $1,000 a performance).
To such serious musicians as Dr. Peter Herman Adler, the conductor who worked with him in The Great Caruso, the case of Mario Lanza is a peculiarly American tragedy. "Opera singers are like wild animals," says Dr. Adler. "They must be trained, kept in strict discipline. In Italy, there are a dozen opera houses for young singers to train where they can be in the right artistic atmosphere. Where in America can a young singer go but these two opera houses in New York (the Met and the N.Y. City Opera), to sing once or twice a week in minor roles?
"Mario went to Hollywood, and Hollywood has been his Frankenstein. The pressure he is under is tremendous, always having to put up a front; and his voice is not settled yet. He knows he has come up too fast and he feels insecure. For this he overcompensates by boasting and showing off. There is still time. Ten years with the right opera company, and no one could compare with him. But who can expect him, after being a star, to go back to learning? I have been trying to talk him into touring in Italy a year. But you cannot tell."