Magda Olivero

Born March 25, 1910; Died September 8, 2014.

Magda Olivero, who has died aged 104, was one of Italy's star sopranos, a famed exponent of verismo ("realistic") roles in which she distinguished herself at the New York Metropolitan, where she sang Tosca, with acclaimed authority, at the age of 65.

A judge's daughter, she was born in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, studied under the Italian composer Ghedini and, with the backing of a local magistrate, first sang on Turin Radio in her early twenties.

Though this appears to have been a disaster (it was reported that she had "no voice, no musicality, no personality, nothing") she triumphed over it and was soon singing Lauretta in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, one of the most famous of her early roles, as well as appearing in Verdi's Nabucco at La Scala, Milan.

As her career developed, it was in big opera houses rather than small ones that she flourished. This inevitably cut her off from Glyndebourne and the Edinburgh Festival, which had only the King's Theatre at its disposal.

Nevertheless she came to Edinburgh in 1963 during Lord Harewood's period as director, winning acclaim for her appearance as Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur with the company from the San Carlo Opera, Naples, which managed to squeeze itself into these cramped premises.

She was the composer's favourite exponent of the role - that of a great Parisian actress from Voltaire's time who was poisoned by a rival - which stood unsurpassed in her repertoire for much of her career, especially in her native Italy.

In America it was in Puccini that she won her biggest ovation, so big, indeed, that when she first sang Tosca at the Met (by which time she was in her sixties) the conductor had to stop the performance repeatedly because of the audience's response and she was cheered for more than 20 minutes at the end. Her fans quickly became known as Magdamaniacs. Not even her Manon Lescaut with Placido Domingo could equal it.

Yet not all her roles were chosen with such acclaim in mind. Poulenc's tragi-monologue La Voix Humaine was among her specialities. She also sang Mascagni's Iris (the composer was a friend), Zandonai's Juliet and Romeo, Giordano's Fedora and she dared to portray Cherubini's Medea in Dallas, which was Maria Callas's domain, and to score a hit with it.

Her Puccini operas included The Girl of the Golden West and Suor Angelica rather than Madama Butterfly. Her voice was rough edged and seldom sounded perfect (the same could be said of Callas's) but it did not weaken with age.

Her final appearance in La Voix Humaine was in Verona in 1981, and she was still tackling Adriana Lecouvreur in her nineties, although not, it must be said, on stage. She wore well, she claimed, because she ate vegetarian food and kept on singing.

She married Aldo Busch, an industrialist, in 1940. Though she said she wanted to raise a large family, and briefly retired from the stage in order to do so, they had no children. Her husband died in 1982.