The Experience
Since the museum is in Lanza’s boyhood neighborhood, the visitor gets a true neighborhood feel, almost like dropping in on a good friend. The walls are lined with all sorts of Lanza memorabilia. There are schoolboy shots, including a junior high class photo containing future Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo, and MGM publicity photos. Some of Lanza’s old movie costumes dot the display cases. Fans have sent in homey memorabilia and letters as well.
Lanza was an original: an opera singer who, for a few years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, crossed over to be a film idol as well. He died at 38 in 1959, just as his pure singing career was starting to burgeon in Europe. The museum evokes that mid-20th-century time when movie icons came and went at the behest of studio chieftains.
History
The Mario Lanza Museum grew out of the Mario Lanza Institute, which was founded in 1962 to help provide scholarship money for classical vocal students. As more and more Lanza artifacts have been donated, the museum, now in its fourth location, has grown.