Licia Albanese, who recorded the roles of Mimì and Violetta with Arturo Toscanini, has died at her home in Manhattan; she was 105. Born in Torre a Mare in southern Italy, Felicia Albanese made her debut in either 1934 (in Bari as Mimì) or 1935 (in Milan as Madama Butterfly); either way she appeared as Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi at La Scala, Milan in 1935. Her career was launched and she was soon appearing in the big houses around the world. She appeared at the Met in New York in 1940 as Madama Butterfly, a role she was to sing 72 times there and, over the course of 26 seasons, would sing 427 performances in 17 roles in 16 operas. She would also appear regularly in San Francisco, singing 22 roles over 20 years. She also appeared, as Desdemona in the very first telecast from the Met in 1948, opposite Ramón Vinay's Otello with Leonard Warren as Iago, conducted by Fritz Busch.

A lirico-spinto, Albanese’s repertoire embraced Violetta, Liù and Manon Lescaut but it was as Madama Butterfly that she enjoyed her greatest success. Writing in the booklet for a 2006 Testament collection, the vocal authority and Gramophone reviewer John Steane commented that 'She knew what she was going to do next, vocally and dramatically – but what the audience experienced was the sense of an assured spontaneity. In the theatre you felt that her singing and her movements might take any number of forms: in a recording it will always take one. The living being is caught, pinned-down, captured; and that’s not the way she was.'

She recorded extensively, invariably for RCA, including Carmen (as Micaëla, conducted with Fritz Reiner) and Manon Lescaut (with Jussi Björling conducted by Jonel Perlea). There are numerous off-the-air recordings including Gounod’s Faust (under Beecham), La bohème (Schippers), La traviata (Adler), Tosca (Mitropoulos), Falstaff (Reiner) and Iphigénie en Tauride (Sanzogno).

After retiring from the operatic stage, she would occasionally return to perform, most notably as Heidi Schiller in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, a role she sang at Avery Fisher Hall in 1985 and then, the following year, in Texas.

She was chairman of The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation which was established in 1974 and she frequently taught at New York’s conservatories. In 2000, she was awarded the Handel Medallion by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, for her contribution to New York’s cultural life.