For the First Time on AllMovie

Released in the U.S. under the title For the First Time, this routine love story-musical was filmed mainly for the purpose of showboating Alfred Arnold Cocozza, better known as Mario Lanza. The storyline is a way of stringing the songs together and involves young singer Tony Costa (Lanza), who falls in love with a deaf woman. He is both enamored and good-hearted, and so he devotes his earnings as a singer to paying for a way for her to regain her hearing -- and also hear him sing. Among the many featured songs are standards like Donna e Mobile, O Sole Mio, and Ave Maria, as well as others such as Come Prima and I Love You. Lanza was under contract to do two more films for a German studio when he died of a heart attack four months after this film was released.