Anna Moffo
Anna Moffo (* June 27, 1932 in Wayne, Pennsylvania, † 9 March 2006 in New York City ) was an American opera singer ( lyric soprano ) and actress.
Biography
Anna Moffo was the daughter of Italian-American shoemaker Nicolas Moffo and his wife Regina ( Cinti ). In addition, she has also performed as a singer in song recitals, weddings, funerals and in choirs. According Moffo wanted their parents that they should be a Catholic nun of leaving school. Instead, they won a free space for a four -year education at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, after she sang the only opera aria she knew: " Un bel di vedremo ... " from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. She studied there first literary history and music, and came 1953 to the end of that training to Italy. There she studied at the University of Perugia.
In 1954 she took part in a singing contest of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which she also won. Your price was a Fulbright scholarship, with whom she went to Rome the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in order to study the Italian language and song. During this time she was a member of the Italian Women's Hockey Team.
In 1955 she gave her operatic debut as Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Spoleto. Her breakthrough achieved in the next year, when they gave the lead role in Puccini's Madama Butterfly for a television transmission, in which Mario Lanfranchi directed. At the same time Lanfranchi was also a producer for the record company RCA Victor and the Italian broadcaster RAI. In the same year she also made first recordings at RAI ( Madama Butterfly, La sonnambula, La figlia del Reggimento and Falstaff ). Moffo and he married in 1957. However Lanfranchi overwhelmed her voice, as he put them in an average of twelve new roles in the first four years of her career.
In 1957 she made her debut at La Scala in Milan, on August 10, 1957 at the Salzburg Festival and on 15 September 1957, the Vienna State Opera as Nanetta in Verdi's Falstaff under the baton of Herbert von Karajan. At the State Opera, she appeared as Gilda in Rigoletto, the title role of Jules Massenet's Manon, as Marguerite in Charles Gounod's Faust, as Micaela in Georges Bizet's Carmen on, as Mimì in Puccini's La Bohème and Violetta in La Traviata.
Her debut in the U.S. were Moffo 1957 in La Bohème at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. On November 14, 1959 was her first engagement at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Violetta in La Traviata, which was one of their main roles. Nearly two decades she remained faithful to the Met where he performed in 21 matches, including Lucia, Gilda, Adina, Mimi, Liù, Marguerite, Nedda, Pamina, Juliette, Manon, Mélisande, and the four women in The Tales of Hoffmann. In the seventies Moffos voice made but increasingly. One critic wrote of a " serious deterioration " of the voice. Your last appearance at the Metropolitan Opera had Moffo 1976. Recently, she sang in 1983 at a gala.
Special emphasis needs her role as Violetta Valéry in La Traviata, summed over the Michael Parouty: " For a time it was fashionable to consider Anna Moffo with condescension: Star figure and movie career, sensual, glamorous song and a theatricality that their proximity to Hollywood betrayed. But undeniably it is a skilful and intelligent actress of Violetta, her behind exaggerated charm is not without charm, and her voice has something truly Shining. "
1964 and 1967, she had her own TV show in Italy, the " Anna Moffo Show". She appeared in several feature films as well as in opera and operetta films: La Traviata (1968), Lucia di Lammermoor (1971 ), The Gypsy Princess, The beautiful Galathée.
In 1972, she was divorced from Lanfranchi and married in 1974 the former RCA president and head of the TV station NBC Robert Sarnoff, who died in 1997.
The opera diva, who last lived in Manhattan died, according to her stepdaughter Rosita Sarnoff of a stroke.