Anna Moffo collection (MSS 62)

Born on 27 June 1932 in Wayne, PA, Anna Moffo was an accomplished athlete and excellent student at Radnor High School before winning a place at the Curtis Institute of Music to study voice in 1950. Following her 1954 graduation, she traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship, where, soon after, her operatic career took off after a televised appearance as Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly. By the early 1960s Moffo had cemented her reputation as a leading lyric-coloratura soprano, performing at, among others, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Teatro di San Carlo, The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Royal Opera House. Celebrated as much for her beauty as for her voice (she was christened “La Bellisima”), Moffo dominated the operatic stage for nearly a decade, particularly in her signature role as Violetta in La Traviata. However, a grueling opera schedule coupled with weekly appearances on her namesake variety show led, in 1968, to serious injury to her voice from which she never fully recovered. After formally retiring from singing in 1983, Moffo served as a board member on the Metropolitan Opera Guild and taught master classes around the world until her death in 2006 at age 73.