I've just learned from two posters on the Opera-L forum that Licia
Albanese turned 100 last July. Not only that, but here is the great
lady herself singing a couple of remarkably good notes at her 100
birthday party:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DaW7c7I_OKI
Amazing stuff!
The announcement has caused quite a flurry on Opera-L, since Licia has
always maintained that she was born in July 1913, which of course
would make her a "mere" 95. Several Opera-L posters insisted this date
was correct, pointing out that even the esteemed Groves Dictionary of
Music & Musicians confirms it.
Not so, according to the reliable Ed Rosen of Premiere Opera, who
recently spoke to a person who attended her 100th birthday party.
Another poster mentioned that he had long been suspicious of the 1913
date after discovering that Ms Albanese's operatic debut was not in
1934, as has always been reported, but at least as early as 1932 --
and she was certainly performing concerts in 1931. According to this
poster, Licia herself confirmed the 1932 date: "A very good friend
asked her about a specific engagement in 1932 in a small Italian town
whose name I now forget and she responded "Oh, you found that".
So Licia was 13 years older than Lanza when she appeared with him in
the Otello sequences in Serenade! I shouldn't really be surprised,
though, as Armando told me several years ago of rumours that Albanese
may have been born "as much as five years" earlier than she had always
maintained. Of course, she is by no means alone among singers in
fibbing about her age; as Ed Rosen pointed out, Dorothy Kirsten had
shaved 10 years off her age -- fooling a lot of people for a long
time. And I'd always thought that Lanza's claim to a newspaper
interviewer in 1959 that he was only 33 was outrageous! I wonder if he
was aware of his two colleagues' equal flexibility with dates?!
In any event, a belated 100th happy birthday to a great artist. May we
all be as vibrant at her age!