Item #23761 Role portrait photograph of the soprano in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Signed in full. Licia ALBANESE.

Role portrait photograph of the soprano in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Signed in full

Three-quarter length portrait. Ca. 253 x 203 mm.

Licia Albanese "began her career at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, where in 1934 she was an emergency replacement for an indisposed Butterfly in the second half of the opera. The same opera, always closely identified with her, occasioned her formal début at Parma (1935) and her début at the Metropolitan (1940). During her career she made more than 1000 appearances in 48 roles, in the lyric or lirico spinto repertory, including Mozart (Donna Anna, Zerlina, Susanna) and French opera (Micaëla, Manon, Gounod’s Marguerite) as well as the obvious Italian challenges; her speciality was the Puccini heroines. A singer of extraordinary technical skill and emotional intensity, she was the Violetta and Mimì in Toscanini’s recorded NBC broadcasts. She is perhaps best represented by the excerpts from her tragic Butterfly and her 1938 recording of Mimì in a complete La bohème from La Scala... In later years she taught, and sang sporadically in concert and in roles the Metropolitan had, perhaps wisely, denied her, such as Aida and Santuzza." Martin Bernheimer in Grove Music Online.

Item #23761

Price: $25.00  other currencies

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