Moffo, Anna

Early years

Anna Moffo was born June 27, 1932 in Philadelphia , Wayne , Pennsylvania ( USA ). Parents of the future singer - cobbler Nikolo Moffo and his wife Regina Chinti - were Italians . After graduating from high school, Anna Moffo began studying vocals in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music with Eugenia Giannini-Gregory, sister of the famous soprano singer Dusolina Giannini. In 1954, Anna Moffo received a Fulbright scholarship , which gave her the opportunity to go to Italy to continue her musical education. In Italy, she studied in Rome at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia , where her teachers were the famous soprano singer Mercedes Lopart and maestro Luigi Ricci .

Opera career

In 1955, Anna Moffo made the Italian debut at the festival in Spoleto , where she sang the role of Norina in the opera Don Don Pascale by Donizetti .

At the age of 24, on January 24, 1956, the singer performed in the role of Chio-Chio-san in the television version of Puccini 's opera Madame Butterfly . This film was shot by the Italian television company RAI . The director was Mario Lanfranca, who on December 8, 1957 became the first husband of Anna Moffo. Shortly before the wedding, Anna Moffo performed at a concert in the Roman Opera . Herbert von Karajan invited her to sing the part of Nannetta in Falstaff . Anna Moffo was also invited to perform in the Zerlins in “ Don Juan ”, Amina in “Somnambule” , at the Aix-en-Provence festival, and made her debut recordings at the EMI studio: the Nannetta (Falstaff) games run by Karayan, Musetta in “Bohemia” with Maria Callas , Giuseppe di Stefano and Rolando Panerai. In 1957 , immediately after the wedding, the singer made her debut in Milan’s La Scala Theater, at the Vienna State Opera , at the Salzburg Festival , at the Neapolitan Theater of San Carlo .

On November 14, 1959, she debuted in the Metropolitan Opera with the part of Violetta in Verdi 's La Traviata , in which she will perform more than 880 times. Anna Moffo has performed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera Theater for seventeen seasons. Her repertoire included such parties as Amina in “La Sonnambula” , Elvira in “Puritans” , Adina in “Love Drink” , Lucia di Lammermoor , Juliet , Marie in “Daughter of the Regiment” , Gilda in “Rigoletto” , Margarita in “Faust” ” , Michaela at Carmen , Manon , Tosca , Mimi at Bohemia , Liu at Turandot , Suzanna at The Marriage of Figaro , Pamina at The Magic Flute , Leonora at Troubadour , Louise Miller , Carmen , and others.

The singer often performed both in Europe and in the USA, on the stages of various theaters and cities, frequent moves and a large amount of work led to physical exhaustion and problems with her voice, therefore, since 1976 her opera career has declined.

Subsequent years

Anna Moffo showed herself not only as an opera singer, but also tried herself as a pianist, violinist, movie actress, television host, dancer, songwriter. So, for example, in 1960, she starred in the movie “ The Battle of Austerlitz ”, in 1962 as Serpina in the opera film “The Maid Woman”, in 1965 she starred in the film “Housekeeping in Italian”, in 1970 She starred in the movie “Divorce”, from 1960 to 1973, she conducted a program on the Italian television “The Anna Moffo Show”. In 1968, Anna Moffo starred in the opera film La Traviata , and in 1971 in the opera opera Lucia di Lammermoor . Both opera films were filmed on Italian RAI television by directors Sandro Bolci and the first husband of the singer, Mario Lanfranca. In the early 1970s, Anna Moffo began filming on German television in operetta films, such as The Queen of Chardash (1971), The Bat (1971), and Beautiful Elena (1975). Anna Moffo also starred in several movies: “A Love Story” (1970), “A Concert for a Single Gun” (1970), and others.

In 1972, Anna Moffo divorced Lanfranca, and two years later, on November 14, 1974 , she married one of the leaders of RCA, Robert Sarnov. They remained together until the death of Sarnov on February 22, 1997 .

Death

The last years of her life, Anna Moffo was seriously ill: she had breast cancer , and for 10 years she struggled with the disease. The singer died on March 9, 2006 in New York at the age of 73 from a stroke . She was buried next to Sarnov in Kensico cemetery in Valhalla, New York .

• Anna Moffo on the Perissimo website
• Anna Moffo at operanews.com
• Article about Anna Moffo, photos, quotes on the site Opera.News.ru
• “Anna Moffo Died” (obituary article in the Kommersant newspaper. No. 43 (3374), March 14, 2006)
• Radio program about Anna Moffo on the site of Orpheus radio station (inaccessible link)
• An article about Anna Moffo at operamusic.ru
• Anna Moffo on davidhertzberg.wordpress.co
• Anna Moffo on YouTube
• Photos by Anna Moffo
• Radio programs (2) "Anna Moffo" of M.Malkov's cycle "From the collection of rare records"