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labelnews_title[0] = "Victoria de los Angeles";
labelnews_id[0] = "1636727";
labelnews_text[0] = "Victoria de los Angeles is Catalan and was born in Barcelona. She comes from a musical family and entered the Conservatorio de Liceo in Barcelona to study both singing and piano. She completed the six year course in just three years and graduated with full honours when she was only eighteen. She joined the Ars Musicae group where she was introduced to a vast repertoire of Lieder, French and Spanish song and the music of baroque and renaissance composers. In 1944 she made her debut in a recital at the Palay de la Musica Catalana and several months later made her operatic debut as the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona. In 1947 she won the Geneva International Singing Competition, which brought her to the attention of the BBC, for whom she was invited to sing the part of Salud in de Falla's La Vida breve.
Her debut at the Paris Opéra in 1949 was a triumph and the following year saw an equally successful debut at Covent Garden, as Mimì in La Bohème. In 1950 and 1951 she made her debuts at La Scala, Milan in the title role of Ariadne auf Naxos and as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust at The Metropolitan, New York, where she was especially admired throughout her operatic career. She sang regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, appearing in roles such as Elsa in Lohengrin, the title roles in Massenet's Manon and Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and on one memorable occasion as both Nedda and Santuzza in I pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana. Throughout the 1960's de los Angeles regularly appeared at all the world's major opera houses, including the Colón in Buenos Aires; Bellas Artes in Mexico City; the Vienna State Opera; Rome Opera; San Carlo in Naples; La Monnaie in Brussels and opera houses in Copenhagen and Stockholm. Her operatic repertoire also included Don Giovanni, Carmen, Il barbiere de Siviglia; Acis and Galatea, Pelleas et Melisande, Die Meistersinger, La Traviata, Simon Boccanegra and Dido and Aeneas. In 1961 she was invited by Wieland Wagner to open the Bayreuth Festival in a new production of Tannhäuser.
During her long career, Victoria de los Angeles collaborated with many of the world's greatest conductors, including Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Monteux, Charles Münch, Victor de Sabata, Tullio Serafin, Carlo Maria Giulini, Eugen Jochum, István Kertész, Zubin Mehta, André Cluytens, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Georges Prêtre and Gabriele Santini. She has also appeared with several leading singers and accompanists in recital, including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons.
Victoria de los Angeles had a huge repertoire of German Lieder and French songs and she made extensive and repeated recital tours of Europe, North and South America, South Africa, the Middle and Far East and Australasia. She made a speciality on these tours of singing the music of her native country, Spain, which she has brought to audiences all over the world. She performed at the Closing Ceremony of the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992.
Her association with EMI goes back to 1948 and she remained under an exclusive contract for nearly thirty years. She made over 80 recordings for EMI, which included 21 complete operas and over 25 solo recital records. Puccini's La Bohème and Bizet's Carmen, both conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, are mainstays of the EMI opera catalogue, as are her recordings of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust with André Cluytens and the title role in Puccini's Madama Butterfly, which she has recorded twice. Other recordings currently in her discogrpahy include Fauré's Requiem; I Pagliacci; Cavalleria rusticana; Manon and Werther by Massenet; Il barbiere di Siviglia; La Traviata and Simon Boccanegra. Her recording awards include the Edison award, six Grands Prix du Disque and eight awards from the Recording Academy of Arts and Sciences.";
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