Victoria de los Ángeles
Victoria de los Ángeles López García (1 November 1923 – 15 January 2005) was a Spanish operatic lyric soprano and recitalist whose career began after the Second World War and reached its height in the years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.The following year, she made her debut in Salzburg and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Mimì, and in the United States with a recital at Carnegie Hall.Though Carmen lay comfortably in her range, she nevertheless also sang major soprano roles, the best known of which were Donna Anna, Manon, Nedda, Desdemona, Cio-Cio-San, Mimi, Violetta and Mélisande.James Hinton, Jr. praised the curious means she used to achieve her characterisation of Rosina in the 1954 Met's The Barber of Seville: De los Ángeles performed regularly in song recitals with pianists Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons, occasionally appearing with other eminent singers, such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.[4] Elizabeth Forbes, writing in UK's The Independent, also noted that "It is impossible to imagine a more purely beautiful voice than that of Victoria de los Ángeles at the height of her career in the 1950s and early 1960s".[2] She was ranked number 3, after Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland, in the BBC Music Magazine's List of The Top Twenty Sopranos of All Time (2007).