In a new Foreword for the upcoming, updated print copy of my book, The One Tenor, a contemporary operatic superstar—addressing the claim that a voice as impossibly beautiful as Mario Lanza's could only have been an artifice created by sound engineers—says:

Not even the most modern voice mixers can replicate the beauty that was Mario Lanza’s voice. Indeed, most tenors would be out of business if technology could even come close to mimicking him. What Lanza had was a gift from God that cannot be digitally bestowed nor replicated.

The "gift from God" is captured unambiguously in the latest of an admirably quick succession of Lanza CDs from Sepia Records, overseen by Dr. Derek McGovern, Never Till Now. To mix my metaphors, I am going to set a ridiculously high bar and go out on a sturdy limb: never till now did Mario sound as miraculous as this. Anyone who wants to dispute this claim must reckon with I'll Walk with God as he's never heard it before. Or the flawless Because from the soundtrack of The Great Caruso. Or For You Alone, whose penultimate note would bring down not just low-flying aircraft but the most distant satellite. To add rapture to ecstasy, the CD retrieves Mario's mischievous and beautifully-spoken introductions to The Night Is Young, If I Loved You and Because You're Mine. It is irrefutable proof of a further observation by the aforementioned super-star:

Many say that the voice is one of the mirrors of the soul and there can be no shadow of a doubt that Mario was a fine, sincere man, a fact so poignantly reflected in his singing that drew you in and left you wanting for more.

I shan't give a track-by-track review of this CD. Instead, I'll bestow on Derek McGovern, Sepia and its sound engineer Robin Cherry, this accolade: normally I make a point of setting aside an appropriate chunk of time each day to listen to a concerto or symphony or piano trio or quintet or some such, in my relentless desire to hear every last piece of music from the Romantic genre—music's apogee—ever written before I die. Over the last few days that time has been devoted solely to listening to this CD, without skipping a single track. It contains the essence and distillation of Romanticism. I can pay no higher tribute, nor offer a higher commendation.

Never Till Now is available from sepiarecords.com, and will soon be on Amazon.