Anna Moffo: La Diva La Donna – a new exhibition opens at Villa Lanfranchi
Twenty years after her death, Anna Moffo returns – in photographs – to the house where her Italian life was rooted.
Anna Moffo, la Diva la Donna, a new exhibition curated by Eles Iotti, opens on 23 August and runs until 25 October at Villa Lanfranchi, about half an hour’s drive from Parma.
It is a fitting setting. The villa, one of the oldest historic residences in the area, was for years the home that Moffo shared with her husband, director Mario Lanfranchi, and is now the seat of the Fondazione Mario Lanfranchi, whose archive supplies the images on display.
From an unknown American to “La Bellissima”
Moffo’s Italian story began in January 1956, when Lanfranchi – then a young RAI television director trained in Milan – cast her, at that point still largely unknown, as Cio-Cio-San in a groundbreaking televised Madama Butterfly. It was among the first operas ever produced for television, and it turned Moffo into an overnight sensation across Italy. The two married the following year, on 8 December 1957, and Lanfranchi went on to direct her in a string of further projects, most memorably the 1968 film of La traviata, in which her Violetta – the role she returned to more than any other across her career – remains one of opera-on-screen’s more celebrated performances. Lanfranchi also acted as her manager through the years the couple spent together, based largely in Rome, before their marriage ended in the 1970s. It was in this period, too, that Moffo became a fixture of Italian popular culture well beyond the opera house, hosting her own television show (with an English title: The Anna Moffo Show) and being counted among the country’s most photographed women.
Diva and Donna
The exhibition’s premise is to hold those two identities up against each other. Curator Eles Iotti has drawn on previously unpublished material from the Fondazione’s archive – refined, professional portraits alongside more private, informal images – to trace, as she puts it, “the fabric of an identity built around Moffo’s public figure”. The show sets the untouchable world of the Diva, well documented in biographies and chased by the press and magazines of her day, in dialogue with the more everyday life of the Donna: elegance and mass-market celebrity culture side by side.
Whether the title poses a genuine contrast or simply two faces of the same person is, in some ways, the exhibition’s real question – and one of the more interesting problems in any portraiture of a public figure. Where does the official ‘mask’, however superbly costumed, end and the private self begin? Judging by the material on show, the answer may lie less in a line between the two than in the images that let both show through at once: Anna and Mario, close together, off stage.
Anna Moffo, la Diva la Donna
23 August – 25 October Villa Lanfranchi, Santa Maria del Piano, Lesignano de’ Bagni (Parma)
Villa Lanfranchi
One of the oldest historic residences in the area, Villa Lanfranchi stands in Santa Maria del Piano, a hamlet of Lesignano de’ Bagni, in the hills south of Parma. The house takes its name from Mario Lanfranchi, who made it his home and filled it with a lifetime’s collection of art, costumes, and memorabilia from his career as a director and producer. It was here that he lived with Anna Moffo during their marriage, and it is here that the Fondazione Mario Lanfranchi, custodian of his archive, is now based – making the villa itself as much a part of Moffo’s Italian story as any stage or studio.
Visiting
Villa Lanfranchi, Via Martiri della Libertà 72, Santa Maria del Piano, Lesignano de’ Bagni (Parma).
The house-museum and the exhibition Anna Moffo, la Diva la Donna are open by guided tour only, by prior booking – call or WhatsApp +39 339 1667852, or email info@fondazionemariolanfranchi.it.
Opening months are from March to October; hours vary by period, so it’s worth checking ahead. Details at fondazionemariolanfranchi.it.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
Finally one of the most beautiful voices ever will be recognized. Y think it is a real pity that this beautiful singer and woman has been overlooked she is abseloutely exquisite in LA Traviata. She was also so versatile. But her voice bellisimo. I don’t know another si ger with a more beautiful velvet voice. Bravo finally