Herva Nelli

She also sang the title roles of Bellini's Norma, Verdi's Aida (with Bernardo de Muro at the end of his career, 1944), and Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

Also in 1947, Nelli successfully auditioned for the conductor Arturo Toscanini (following the recommendation of Licia Albanese), and sang the part of Desdemona in the NBC Symphony Orchestra's concert version of Verdi's Otello, opposite Ramón Vinay.

This led to the famous series of broadcasts of other Verdi works, which were later issued on records by RCA Victor: Aida (1949, which was televised as well), Alice Ford in Falstaff (with Giuseppe Valdengo, 1950), the Requiem (with Fedora Barbieri, Giuseppe Di Stefano, and Cesare Siepi, 1951), and Amelia in Un ballo in maschera (with Jan Peerce and Robert Merrill, 1954), which was Toscanini's final operatic performance.

In 1951, Nelli reappeared with the New York City Opera, in Cavalleria rusticana again, as well as Aida; the next year, she portrayed Maddalena de Coigny in Giordano's Andrea Chénier (in Theodore Komisarjevsky's production).

The soprano appeared in Cuba (Tosca, 1950) and in Mexico City at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, in 1953, starring in Il trovatore and Norma.

Upon her 1951 return to the City Opera, Howard Taubman wrote of her in The New York Times: "Mme Nelli's voice is of grand size and range, and when she has it under control it has quality and character.

On September 22, 1956, La Nelli created the role of Bethsheba in the American premiere of Darius Milhaud's David, co-starring Harve Presnell, Mack Harrell, and Giorgio Tozzi, conducted by Izler Solomon, and staged by Harry Horner.

[citation needed] In 2005, reviewing the DVD release of the Concert Version of Aida, Ira Siff, in Opera News, noted that "there is a sense of occasion here, as the eighty-two-year-old Toscanini … unleashes a performance of immense power.