Anna Moffo - Mozart Arias - Philharmonia Orchestra (2000)

Artist: Anna Moffo
Title Of Album: Mozart Arias - Philharmonia Orchestra
Year: 2000
Label: Testament
Style: Classical
Format: FLAC (image +.cue, log + scans)
Bitrate: Lossless
Total Time: 64:32
Total Size: 326 MB (+ 3% rec.)
Anna Moffo was one of the leading sopranos at the Metropolitan Opera in New York throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. To many opera-lovers in the USA, she was quite simply the most beautiful diva of her era. She was certainly one of the most talented, possessing an appealing stage presence, a lyric soprano voice of full, radiant tone and an impeccable coloratura technique, which she used with excellent musical taste.

Anna Moffo first appeared on records in the role oi Nanetta in the legendary recording of Falstaff conducted by Herbert von Karajan, which EM! producer Walter Legge made in London in june 1936. Two months later Legge cast her as Musetta alongside the Mimi of Maria Callas in the recording of "La Bohème", made in August 1956 at La Scalla. The following year she participated in an EMI recording in Naples of Galuppi's opera "Il filosofo di Campagna", under the baton of Renato Fasano, and took the part of the female Italian singer in Richard Strauss' "Capriccio" with a starry cast led by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Then in May 1958 Legge invited Moffo to make her first solo recording with a Mozart programme accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Alceo Galliera. Originally released as two separate mono LPs and four stereo EPs, this material is here brought together in a single album for the first time. Conrad L. Osborne, writing in "High Fidelity" on the occasion of the release in the USA of the first LP, said: "This young American soprano's first recorded recital has much to recommend it. Hers is decidedly a lyric instrument, but it is a full-bodied, mature one, and I welcome a singer who will give us Susanna, Zerlina and Despina without coy squealing and simpering."

Moffo made her final recordings for EMI at the end of 1959, when she sang Susanna in "Le nozze di Figaro" under Carlo Maria Giulini and recorded a programme of coloratura arias by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis. Her recording allegiance then moved to RCA, where she starred in a number of complete opera recordings covering both standard repertoire titles such as La traviata and "Madama Butterfly" and some rarities, including Puccini's "La rondine" and Montemezzi's "L'amore dei tre re"; she eventually married the head of the company, Robert Sarnoff.

Tracklist:
Anna Moffo - Mozart Arias

Le nozze di Figaro (Da Ponte)
[1] Act I - Non so più (2:40)
[2] Act II - Voi, che sapete (2:49)
[3] Act II - Venite, inginnocchiatevi (3:07)
[4] Act IV - Giunse alfin il momento ...Deh vieni (4:29)

Così fan tutte (Da Ponte)
[5] Act I - In uomini, in soldati (2:40)
[6] Act II - Una donna a quindici anni (3:24)

Die Entfüihrung aus dem Serail
(Stephanie after/nach/d'aprbs Bretzner)
[7] Act I - Ach, ich liebte (5:12)

Don Giovanni (Da Ponte)
[8] Act I - Batti, batti o bel Masetto (3:49)
[9] Act II - Vedrai, carino (3:27)

Die Zauberflöte (Schikaneder)
[10] Act II - Ach, ich fühl's (4:38)

Il re pastore (Metastasio)
[11] Act II - L'amerò sarò costante (5:46)

Misera, dove son? K.369 (Metastasio)
[12] Misera, dove son? . . . Ah! non son io (7:32)

Mass in C minor, K.427
[13] Laudamus te (4:37)
[14] Et incarnatus est (7:36)

Exsultate, jubilate, K.165
[15] Alleluia (2:51)

Philharmonia Orchestra
conducted by Alceo Galliera

Recorded 17-19 May, 1958, No.1 Studio, Abbey Road London.
Digital remastered at Abbey Road Studios, 2000