ALBANESE, LICIA

The Italian-born later naturalised-American soprano Licia Albanese was born in Bari in 1913 and originally trained as a pianist. She later studied singing with Giuseppina Baldassare-Tedeschi. Albanese’s career began when she suddenly replaced an ailing colleague in 1934 at the Teatro Lirico, Milan as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, with which she also made her ‘official’ début in Parma the following year. Her first appearance at the Teatro alla Scala during the 1935-36 season was as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, followed in succeeding seasons as Suzel in L’amico Fritz, Micaëla in Carmen, Anna in Loreley and Mimì in La Bohème which she later recorded (Naxos 8.110072-73). She sang Liù opposite the Turandot of Eva Turner at Covent Garden in 1937 and first appeared at the Metropolitan, New York in 1940. It was in this latter house that she spent most of her subsequent career before retiring in 1966.

In nearly three hundred performances she sang Desdemona, Violetta, Nedda, Massenet’s and Puccini’s Manon, Mozart’s Countess and Susanna, Adriana Lecouvreur and Tosca. Toscanini also chose her for his broadcasts of La Bohème and La traviata in 1946. Her other recordings included Micaëla under Reiner (1950), excerpts from Madama Butterfly (1955), with a wide range of operatic arias in French, Italian and Russian, concluding with a selection of Verdi canzoni in 1962.

GREAT SINGERS (1904-1952)	8.110781-82
PUCCINI: Boheme (La) (La Scala) (1938)	8.110072-73
PUCCINI: Boheme (La) (Tebaldi) (1951)	8.110252-53
PUCCINI: Manon Lescaut (Albanese, Bjorling, Perlea) (1954)	8.111030-31