Almost forty years after his premature death, the mystique of Mario Lanza continues. He remains a legendary figure, a crossover icon embraced and remembered by an entire generation for bridging the gap between popular and classical music. The acknowledged inspiration of today`s Three Tenors, Lanza introduced the operatic and Neapolitan repertoire to a wide and adoring audience, with -- as Jose Carreras put it -a glorious, ringing tenor, that ... was his and his alone . He was born Alfred Arnold Cocozza in South Philadelphia, where his youth foreshadowed the promise and the problems of his brief life. Undisciplined and self-indulgent, he was spoiled by adoring parents -- and set apart by the natural gift of his voice. His musical training was sporadic but sufficient: he sang for Serge Koussevitzky at the age of nineteen, and the notoriously demanding conductor immediately arranged for the young Italian American to sing at Tanglewood.