Victoria de los Ángeles López García (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.
After winning first prize in the Geneva International Music Competition in 1947, she sang Salud in Falla's La vida breve with the BBC in London in 1948.
The following year, she made her debut in Salzburg and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Mimì, and in the United States with a recital at Carnegie Hall.
Though Carmen lay comfortably in her range, she nevertheless also sang major soprano roles, the best known of which were Donna Anna, Manon, Nedda, Desdemona, Cio-Cio-San, Mimi, Violetta and Mélisande.
James Hinton, Jr. praised the curious means she used to achieve her characterisation of Rosina in the 1954 Met's The Barber of Seville: De los Ángeles performed regularly in song recitals with pianists Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons, occasionally appearing with other eminent singers, such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
[4] Elizabeth Forbes, writing in UK's The Independent, also noted that "It is impossible to imagine a more purely beautiful voice than that of Victoria de los Ángeles at the height of her career in the 1950s and early 1960s".
[2] She was ranked number 3, after Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland, in the BBC Music Magazine's List of The Top Twenty Sopranos of All Time (2007).
In 2007 a private foundation was established in order to preserve her legacy and promote her figure, named Fundació Victoria de los Ángeles.