Her father was Edgardo Zerni, an Italian operatic tenor of modest reputation, and her aunt was Adele Borghi, a prominent mezzo-soprano admired by Giuseppe Verdi himself.
She studied singing in Milan under a teacher called Bonanno and made her debut in 1914 at the Teatro dal Verme[1] as Micaela in Georges Bizet's Carmen.
The following year Ayres Borghi-Zerni made her first appearance at an important Italian opera house - Teatro Comunale di Bologna, where she performed Gilda in Rigoletto and Amina in Vincenzo Bellini's La sonnambula.
Apart from the greatest Italian stages, Borghi-Zerni was tremendously successful in at The Royal Opera House in London, where in 1919 she sang Violetta in La traviata.
She also made guest appearances at the Teatro Liceo in Barcelona (also in 1919, in Gioacchino Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, Lucia di Lammermoor and Rigoletto) and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo (in 1920, in La traviata, Rigoletto (as a partner of the great tenor Beniamino Gigli) and the world premiere of Raoul Gunsbourg's new opera Satan).