Soprano Anna Moffo was a lovely figure onstage, acting with honesty and charm. She was beautiful and so was her voice; it was a creamy lyric soprano with fine coloratura and a range up to high-E. She was best known for her Violetta and Lucia, but she also shone in Mozart operas and in many other roles as well. She was at her peak in the ’60s; by the early/mid-’70s her technique began to fail her, the voice loosened up, and her pitch could sag. The excerpts on video here present Moffo at her best.
The first part of the DVD is devoted to Moffo’s appearances on TV’s The Bell Telephone Hour; the second offers selections from a pair of operatic films. In two of the appearances she and Richard Tucker perform the two arias and finale to the first act of La bohème–first from 1961, then in 1963 (the latter in black and white). In both Moffo is fresh and lovely, singing with true lyricism and a nice bloom at the top of her voice; she is an ideal Mimi. Tucker is utterly loathesome on the first, blurting out the music at a roar in short breaths and flatting on his interpolated high-B at the act’s close. (He also takes the aria down a half-tone.) In the 1963 performance, he’s a bit smoother and the final note is slightly less flat.
A 1962 tape gives us Moffo and Gedda in the Brindisi and “Un di felice” from Traviata; he is a bit stiff but always musical, and she’s lovely. Another 1962 excerpt is “E strano…” and “Sempre libera”, and in both Moffo is stunning. A “La ci darem la mano” with George London is handsomely sung. Moffo is joined by tenor Sandor Konya in a rather blurry duet from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, which for some reason does not quite impress. From her 1968 film version of Traviata she is joined by baritone Gino Bechi in the moving duet from the second act, and she is both believable and in lustrous voice. The DVD closes with Lucia’s mad scene from a 1971 film; it is poorly staged, thoroughly lacking in atmosphere, and lip-synched. This then is for Moffo fans. She was a lovely singer and you get a good impression of her overall art from this DVD, but many of her individual recordings present her even better (the Luisa Miller on RCA, for instance).
