NEW YORK, March 11 (UPI) -- Acclaimed soprano Anna Moffo has died in New York after a 10-year battle with breast cancer at age 73.
Moffo died of a stroke Thursday night at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the New York Times reported Saturday.
She burst onto the opera scene at a young age and was a frequent star of television and film, but by the time she reached her late '30s, her voice had declined considerably, the newspaper said. Despite her many early successes, her career also reflected the downfall of taking on too much at too young an age.
Moffo made her stage opera in 1955 in Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" and a year later starred in the TV production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly." She married her TV director, Mario Lanfranchi, in 1957.
Lanfranchi pushed her hard, the Times said, and she sang an average 12 roles a year, all leads. Moffo recalled in a 1977 interview that she was exhausted all the time and "psychologically, I was miserable, always away, always alone."
She performed 200 times at New York's Metropolitan Opera well into the 1960s, but by the end of the decade, her voice was no longer reliable.
She divorced Lanfranchi in 1972 and two years later married RCA Chairman Robert W. Scarnoff, who died in 1997. She is survived by her brother, and three step-daughters.
