Licia Albanese, one of the great Italian sopranos of the 20th century, has died. There has been some discussion about her precise age, but general agreement is that she was 105 (older than had been previously thought). She was a rare kind of talent--which is meant not just in the conventional sense of payig a compliment, but the voice itself was an unusual combination of soft-edged delicacy and bursts of piercing power that sung 'through' rather than over the orchestra.
