Anna Moffo

American soprano Anna Moffo was born on 27 June 1932 in Wayne, Pennsylvania. She studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

She had a spectacular early career, with a stage début in 1955 at Spoleto as Norina in Don Pasquale. In 1956 she appeared on TV in Madama Butterfly, and in performances at La Scala Milan, the Salzburg Festival and at the Vienna State Opera. She made her US debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (as Mimi in La bohème) and first appeared at New York Metropolitan Opera in 1959 (as Violetta in La Traviata).

Although a cult figure amongst some American opera lovers and particularly popular in Italy, her voice declined to some extent after the age of thirty, but as the number of singing engagements declined, she turned to public speaking, at which she was very persuasive.

Anna Moffo died in Manhattan on 10 March 2006, aged seventy-three.