Victoria de los Ángeles

Victoria de los Ángeles was born in Barcelona in November 1923 and studied at the Barcelona Conservatory under Dolors Frau. She made her concert début in 1944, won the Geneva International Music Competition in 1947, and her operatic début followed the same year at the Liceu in Barcelona as the Countess in *Le nozze di Figaro*.

Her career across nearly forty years made her one of the central lyric sopranos of the international operatic stage. Her core operatic repertoire was the French and Italian lyric soprano roles — Mimì in *La bohème*, Manon in Massenet’s opera, Marguerite in *Faust*, Mélisande, Cio-Cio-San, Salud in Falla’s *La vida breve*, Rosina, Mireille, the title role in *Carmen*, Donna Anna, the Countess, Pamina, Desdemona, and Manon in Puccini’s opera. She sang at the Metropolitan Opera (1951–61), Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra, La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Bayreuth Festival (a single Elisabeth in *Tannhäuser* in 1961) and the Teatro Colón. Her recital and concert work was extensive across Spanish song (Granados, Falla, Albéniz, the *cançó*) and the French art-song tradition, and her recordings with Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Gonzalo Soriano defined the post-war Spanish vocal recital style internationally.

De los Ángeles retired from staged opera in 1979 and from the concert platform in 1992. She died in Barcelona in January 2005. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of her operatic and recital work.