One of the great Italian divas, the Soprano, Magda Olivero, has died at the age of 104 in Milan after a career spanning more than 70 years.
She died on Monday in the hospital after suffering a stroke last month, according to the Italian news agency, Ansa.
Magda Olivero made her debut in the 1930s but stopped performing after getting married in 1941.
She was coaxed back on to the stage 10 years later and enjoyed renewed stardom in Europe and the US and was still performing in public at the age of 99.
La Scala Opera House in Milan was where she made her earliest performances and described her voice as charismatic, her acting as formidable and her intelligence as “ready and cutting until the end”.
The New York Times described Olivero as a soprano who “for decades whipped audiences around the world into a frenzy of adulation that was operatic even by operatic standards, despite the fact that by her own ready admission she did not possess an especially lovely voice”.
It said that over the years, bootleg recordings of her voice “passed from hand to covert hand among her legions of acolytes”.
“At live performances, she took the stage to screams of ecstasy and left it to thundering ovations,” the paper said.
Her signature roles included title parts in Puccini’s Tosca, Umberto Giordano’s Fedora and Luigi Cherubini’s Medea.
