Victoria de los Ángeles

Victoria de los Ángeles (1 November 1923 – 15 January 2005) was a Spanish operatic lyric soprano and recitalist whose career began after the Second World War and reached its height in the years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.

She was born Victoria de los Ángeles López García in the porter's lodge of the University of Barcelona to Bernardo Lopez Gómez (or Gamez), a university caretaker, and Victoria García. She studied voice under Dolores Frau & guitar with Graciano Tarragó at the Barcelona Conservatory, graduating in just three years in 1941 at age 18.

The soprano married Enrique Magriñá in 1948 and had two sons. Her husband and one of their sons predeceased her. She died on 15 January 2005 of heart failure in her native Barcelona, aged 81. She had been hospitalised for a bronchial infection since 31 December 2004.

In 1941, while still a student, she made her operatic debut as Mimì in La bohème at the Liceu, afterwards resuming her musical studies. In 1945, she returned to the Liceu to make her professional debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro.

After winning first prize in the Geneva International Competition in 1947, she sang Salud in Falla's La vida breve with the BBC in London in 1948. She was accompanied on many of her early recordings by both Graciano Tarragó and his daughter, the guitarist Renata Tarragó.

In her early years in particular, she also sang a lot of florid music (music antiche). While she later made fewer appearances in opera, she continued to give recitals focusing on mostly French, German Lieder and Spanish art songs or songs with Nahuatl texts by mexican composer Salvador Moreno Manzano into the 1990s.

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