Anna Moffo was blessed with beauty, brains and a shimmering, radiant soprano — all natural ingredients of the stardom she won when barely out of school. Raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Moffo was given a full scholarship to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, where she studied with Madame Eufemia Gregory, the sister of Dusolina and Vittorio Giannini. Upon graduation, the soprano won a Fulbright scholarship to study in Italy, where she made her formal operatic debut as Norina in Spoleto in 1955. Her stardom began when she performed Cio-Cio-San in a television production of Madama Butterfly directed by Mario Lanfranchi, who would become her first husband in 1957. She received favorable attention from her other early European appearances — among them, a 1956 Zerlina at the Aix-en-Provence festival. By the end of the decade she had sung at most of the principal theaters in Italy.
Moffo made her U.S. debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1957, as Mimì in La Bohème; her other roles with the company over the remainder of that season and the next were Philine in Mignon, Susanna, Lucia, Nannetta, Liù, Gilda and Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi. San Francisco Opera welcomed her in 1960, with Mimì once again her debut role, followed by Amina in La Sonnambula, Lucia and Violetta. But Moffo’s home theater in the U.S. would always be the Met, where she arrived in 1959, as Violetta. Critic Louis Biancolli praised the twenty-seven-year-old’s debut warmly in The World Telegram and Sun, saying, “She has the making of a star, and the stamina.” Violetta became Moffo’s signature role with the company; she sang eighty performances of Verdi’s courtesan in New York and on tour. (Only Licia Albanese, with eighty-seven performances, has sung more Met Violettas than Moffo.) In 1966, the Moffo Violetta was the centerpiece of a lavish new Met Traviata, presented by the company in its first season at Lincoln Center, with Alfred Lunt’s direction and Cecil Beaton’s sumptuous designs providing a perfect showcase for their star’s sensitive acting and poised, elegant beauty. It was a smash: Moffo’s fashion-model good looks, dressed in Beaton’s elaborate gowns, swiftly acquired near-iconic status in the New York press. The company programmed twenty-nine outings of the Lunt–Beaton Traviata in its first season; Moffo sang twenty-two of them. Other particularly congenial assignments for Moffo during her Met career were Lucia, Marguerite in Faust, Liù and Massenet’s Manon, the latter given in a memorable new production by Günther Rennert in 1963. Moffo sang in Europe throughout the 1960s — Gilda at Covent Garden, Violetta in Berlin, other lyric-coloratura parts in Hamburg, Vienna, Salzburg and Milan — but kept the Met as the base of her professional life. Her last appearance with the company was as Violetta, in 1976, although she returned to Met stage in 1983, to sing “Sweethearts” at the company’s centennial gala, in tandem with her longtime Met colleague, Robert Merrill.
Moffo recorded prolifically in her early career, first with EMI and then with RCA; a vocal crisis in the mid-1970s curtailed her recording activity, as it did her opera-house appearances (which were eventually resumed on a limited basis). Her RCA recordings of La Traviata and Rigoletto, now reissued on CD, retain their classic status, and her studio performances as Luisa Miller, Mimì, Musetta, Nannetta and Susanna (the latter three for EMI) remain uncommonly convincing. Moffo’s good looks and sharp sense of style made her a natural for television, where she was an attractive ambassador for opera throughout the 1960s. Her films included screen versions of La Serva Padrona, La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor and Die Csárdásfürstin, as well as Una Storia d’Amore, Concerto per Pistola Solista and The Adventurers.
Moffo’s marriage to Lanfranchi ended in divorce. She wed broadcasting executive Robert Sarnoff in 1974; their marriage lasted until his death, in 1997. After the frequency of her singing engagements diminished, the soprano remained active in the world of music as a board member of the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts, The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, Opera Orchestra of New York and The New York Festival of Song, as well as of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. A persuasive and graceful public speaker, Moffo was a frequent onstage presence at the Guild’s public programs, always willing to lend her star power to an event that promoted interest in opera and in the Met, even as her battle with cancer took its toll on her once-formidable constitution. Just two months before her death, Moffo appeared at an Opera News tribute to Risë Stevens at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater, speaking in praise of the mezzo, whom she called “one of my idols.” Although her increasing need to conserve her energy was apparent to her colleagues backstage, once she stepped up to the podium Moffo was vibrant, gracious and wryly funny — the definition of a total professional and a real beauty.
