Operatic lyric soprano Victoria de los Ángeles - born Victoria de los Ángeles López Garcia in Barcelona, Spain on November 1, 1923 – is now acknowledged as one of the greatest voices of the 20th century. Encouraged by her father to follow music as a career, she studied voice at the Barcelona Conservatory for three years, graduating in 1941. She made her operatic debut at the Liceu in Barcelona the year she graduated and returned four years later to the same venue to make her professional debut. She won first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1947, which led to her performing popular works on stages all around the world including De Falla’s La Vie Brief at the BBC (1948), Gounod’s Faust at the Paris Opera (1949), and Puccini’s La Bohème at Covent Garden in London (1950). She also performed at Carnegie Hall before making her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1951. The following year, she made her Buenos Aires debut at the Teatro Colón and would continue to return to the city many times until 1979. Victoria de los Ángeles was invited to perform in Wagner's Tannhäuser at the Bayreuth Festival in 1961 before devoting the majority of the rest of her career to concert performances and song recitals (with pianists Geoffrey Parsons and Gerald Moore). Two years after performing at the 1992 Summer Olympics she was named a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in France. Her extensive recording career began in the 1950s and included titles such as Canciones Populares Españolas (1953), Puccini: La Bohème (1956), Five Centuries of Spanish Song (1959), Falla : La Vida Breve (1966), Songs of Catalonia (1970), Songs of Many Lands (1976), and An Evening with Victoria de los Angeles and Geoffrey Parsons (1990), along with many compilations including Catalan Songs (2010), Love Songs - Victoria from the Heart (2011), and a 59 CD box sot entitled The Warner Classics Edition (2023). Victoria de los Ángeles died of respiratory failure on January 15, 2005, at the age of 81.
