Anna Moffo (born on June 27, 1932, although some sources indicate 1930; died March 9, 2006) was an opera soprano primarily active in the 1960s. During her heyday, Moffo was much admired for the purity of her voice and her great physical beauty. Moffo was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Radnor High School, she was offered the opportunity to go to Hollywood to make films, but turned that down because of her intention to become a nun. However, she won a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and went to study there instead.
In 1955, she won the Young Artists Audition and a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. In the same year, she made her stage debut in 1955 as Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Spoleto.
The following year, she appeared in a television production of Madama Butterfly, staged by Mario Lanfranchi, a producer for RCA Victor and RAI, whom she married on December 8, 1957. She also made debut at La Scala as well as at the Salzburg Festival and at the Vienna State Opera in Verdi's Falstaff (conducted by Herbert von Karajan) in the same year. She continued to appear in Vienna until the early 1970s, singing Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, Manon in Massenet's Manon, Marguerite in Gounod's Faust, Micaela in Bizet's Carmen, Mimi in Puccini's La Bohème and Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata.
Moffo also made her American debut as Mimi in La Bohème at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1957, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1959 as Violetta in La Traviata. She returned to the Met in the 1960-61 season to sing three new roles, Gilda in Rigoletto, Adina in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore, and Liù in Turandot with Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli.
Moffo divorced Lanfranchi in 1972 and married former RCA chairman Robert Sarnoff on November 14, 1974 (she was widowed on February 22, 1997). In the late-1970s, Moffo appeared in heavier Verdi roles, such as Leonora in Il Trovatore and Lina in Stiffelio.
Moffo was particularly popular in Italy. She hosted "The Anna Moffo Show" there from 1960 to 1973 and was voted one of the ten most beautiful women in Italy. She remained something of a cult figure among many U.S. opera enthusiasts, as evidenced by Wayne Koestenbaum's book-length poem Ode to Anna Moffo.
Moffo died in New York City, on March 9, 2006, from a stroke after grappling with complications of breast cancer over the last 10 years (see]). She was survived by three step-daughters and a brother. Her exact age at the time of her death is uncertain; different sources have reported it to have been either 73 or 75.
