Anna Moffo - A Portrait of Manon & Great Love Duets

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

A star between the mid-1950s and the early '70s, the Italian American soprano looked as lovely as she sounded - as these arias prove, that was pretty good. — BBC Music Magazine, August 2008, 4 out of 5 stars

Release Date: 7th Jul 2008
Catalogue No: SBT21420
Label: Testament

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Massenet: Manon (highlights)

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

Puccini: Manon Lescaut (highlights)

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

Verdi: La Traviata (highlights)

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor (highlights)

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

Puccini: La Bohème (highlights)

Anna Moffo (soprano) with Robert Kerns, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Alberta Alberti, Maria Casula, Anna di Stasio, Flaviano Labò, Manlio Rocchi, Mario Rinaudo, Enzo Titta, Richard Tucker, Cesare Valletti, Rosalind Elias & Carlo Bergonzi

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Anna Moffo was born of Italian parents in Wayne, Pennsylvania, on 27 June 1932, although some sources give the year as 1930 and others as 1935. After studying with Eufemia Giannini-Gregory at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, she went as a Fulbright scholar to the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where her teachers were Luigi Ricci and Mercedes Llopart. She made her début at Spoleto in 1955 as Norina in Don Pasquale, and created a sensation at the Rome Opera the same year when she appeared there for the first time. She was immediately engaged by Italian television to play Cio-Cio-San in a production of Madama Butterfly, and subsequently appeared on Italian TV as Nannetta, Amina, Lucia di Lammermoor and Maria (La figlia del reggimento). In 1956 she sang Zerlina in Don Giovanni at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and in 1957 she was chosen by Herbert von Karajan to sing Nannetta in Falstaff at the Salzburg Festival. It was also in 1957 that she made her American début in Chicago, appearing as Mimì in La bohème. On 14 November 1959 Moffo appeared for the first time at the Metropolitan as Violetta, a role she sang 80 times with the company. Her success was immediate and she appeared regularly in both the old and new houses throughout the 1960s and early 1970s in 18 major roles, including Pamina, Norina, Gilda, Luisa Miller, the four heroines of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Juliette, Gounod’s Marguerite, Massenet’s Manon, Mélisande, Nedda, Adina, Liù and Lucia di Lammermoor. To many opera-lovers in the USA, she was quite simply the most beautiful diva of her era. She was certainly one of the most talented, possessing an appealing stage presence, a lyric soprano voice of full, radiant tone and an impeccable coloratura technique, which she used with excellent musical taste. After some 130 Met appearances in New York and a further 70 with the company on tour, her last opera performances in the house at Lincoln Center were in March 1976 as Violetta. She returned to the Met on 22 October 1983 to sing a duet with Robert Merrill in the Centennial Gala, which was televised world-wide.

Reviews

August 2008

A star between the mid-1950s and the early '70s, the Italian American soprano looked as lovely as she sounded - as these arias prove, that was pretty good.

Anna Moffo - A Portrait of Manon & Great Love Duets

2 CDs

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