Soprano embraced by Toscanini and Sondheim takes her final curtain call at 105.

The Italian-born soprano who was Toscanini’s choice for recording Violetta and Mimì has died in New York at the remarkable age of 105. In a long and varied career Licia Albanese clocked up over 400 performances at the Metropolitan Opera and was plucked from vocal retirement for the legendary 1985 performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies in Concert.

Felicia Albanese was born in 1909 near Bari in Southern Italy and studied with Puccini contemporary and specialist Giuseppina Baldassare-Tedeschi. She made her unofficial singing debut in Milan in 1934, when she stood in at short notice as Cio-Cio San in a performance of Madama Butterfly – a part that she would go on to make her own in the years ahead. She went on to debut officially the following year, soon taking on the lyric Puccini roles of Manon Lescaut, Mimì and Liu as well as Michäela in Carmen and Violetta in La Traviata.

Success in Italy led to invitations to perform similar repertoire in England and France and Albanese eventaully made her Met debut in 1940 in Madama Butterfly. From that moment on she stayed in New York...