From the mid-1950s until at least the late 1960s the Italian-American soprano Anna Moffo (1932-2006) was trailed as opera’s pin-up girl. Reviews, even of her records, kept on reminding one (in a manner that would now be considered sexist) that she was a beautiful young woman; and that she did far more than just opera – she appeared in films as a ‘straight’ actress, had her own TV series for RAI (she was seen playing its opening music herself on the piano) and recorded a repertoire including operetta and show tunes that RCA’s publicity suggested could make her the next Jeanette MacDonald. This soprano, it was also frequently remarked, did a bit too much too soon, straying out of the lyric roles which were her forte. The career slowed down sharply with a vocal crisis and a courageous but less than wholly successful fightback, although she stayed with the muse as teacher, administrator and promoter.

But what is clear from every record she made is what an utterly hard-working professional she was. Once, in a radio interview, deflecting what had become virtually a default question about why she sounded so ‘sexy’, Moffo replied that words were very important to her. That concern is certainly common to all of her preserved performances, together with her ease in any of the major European languages. No wonder that her (perhaps unexpected) Mélisande at the Metropolitan Opera in 1962 – under Ernest Ansermet, no less, and with Nicolai Gedda as Pelléas and a youthful Teresa Stratas as the boy Yniold – was such a triumph. As was the Canteloube Chants d’Auvergne and Villa-Lobos Bachianas brasileiras disc (her own favourite of her records) that she made with Stokowski in just a few New York sessions in April 1964. (Both the Canteloube and Villa-Lobos feature on ‘Anna Moffo: The Complete RCA Recital Albums’, out this month.) Moffo was bright and smart and a fast learner – virtues that appealed to the big hitters of the day.

Earlier, after her successful Italian debuts on stage (Donizetti’s Norina, Spoleto 1955) and screen (Puccini’s Cio-Cio-San, RAI TV 1956), Walter Legge – sensing the soprano’s natural ability to communicate – put her immediately into starry Columbia recordings alongside his wife, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. (In her On and Off the Record: A Memoir of Walter Legge, Schwarzkopf wrote: ‘We both have always loved Anna and watched her career with parental pride.’) Moffo’s bright, young lyric soprano was precision casting in the second half of the 1950s for the soprano Italian Singer in the Sawallisch/Schwarzkopf Capriccio, Susanna in the Giulini Le nozze di Figaro, Nannetta in the Karajan Falstaff and Musetta alongside Callas inLa bohème – performances that are still benchmarks in today’s catalogues. There was nothing merely supportive (or soubrettish) about these appearances, rather each was a natural actor’s identification with character and dramatic situation. The flirting of both Musetta and Nannetta felt appropriately young and genuine and neither arch nor exaggerated.

Another of Moffo’s evident performing virtues lay in never being swamped by major colleagues. Try one of her loveliest performances, the live Liù conducted by Stokowski from the Metropolitan Opera’s 1961 Turandot (a performance always available somewhere but one that has still never been seriously remastered). The sensuality in ‘Signore, ascolta’ is touching rather than rubbed in, and Moffo’s character shines in the memory despite this Turandot’s few-holds-barred vocal duel between Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. Or try Moffo’s Gilda in a 1963 RCA studio Rigoletto, especially in the last act where the jester’s daughter, intent on sacrificing herself for her worthless lover, has to continue to make a worthwhile impression of impassioned innocence, with Sparafucile, Maddalena and Solti’s interpretation of Verdi’s fortissimo markings all going at full tilt.

The two roles most associated with Moffo remain Violetta and Cio-Cio-San, where the characters’ youth and vulnerability and the music’s mix of the lyric and the technically virtuosic suited her skills well. Her Cio-Cio-San has the right age and impetuosity – the singer once commented that if she didn’t sound quite the 15 years asked for in the libretto, she thought she did sound 17 or 18. There is a suitably disturbing fear and awe both in the love duet and when she finally picks up the fatal dagger. The conducting on this, her most easily available recording is less idiomatic than some of the ‘live’ Italian performances (including the film), but it’s good that it was recorded when it was in 1957. The RCA studio recording of La traviata – again, made early in Moffo’s career (1960) – has become an unjustly forgotten set. It’s extremely ‘live’ from Moffo – there’s a little too much sobbing alongside the well-judged coughing – but its portrait of an angry, unjustly sidelined younger woman is intriguingly distinct from the more grande dame portraits to which we’ve become accustomed. Her ability to convey the role dramatically is complete and natural, a virtue shared by all her records, not excluding an exceptionally moving Mad Scene from Lucia di Lammermoor and the excerpts from numerous operettas.

Key recording

Verdi La traviata

Rome Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Fernando Previtali

(Alto)