The Eclipses of a Star: Anna Moffo Between Opera, Cinema, Television

Abstract

In the fifties and sixties Anna Moffo built up a very transgressive career. She might herself have thought that it had gone far beyond any limits if she tried to ‘purify’ it for the future generations by manipulating her earnest biographers. She used her own image in a very generous way, facing a ‘new’ world that was undergoing dramatic changes. She accepted all challenges and abandoned herself to them, without really considering the consequences. No other belcanto star ever risked so much: over the last decades many fascinating talented singers have emerged, but only the pioneering spirit, both experimental and shameless, of that age could give way to thoughtless acts and uncontrolled contaminations.