Renata Tebaldi

Renata Tebaldi had a voice Toscanini named "la voce d'angelo," the voice of an angel, and her chart tells you it was built through devotion rather than spectacle. Her Sun sat in Aquarius in the sixth house of work, service and daily discipline: the Lion King of everyday duty, a soul that shines through craft, health and relentless refinement. Born in Pesaro in 1922, daughter of a cellist, struck by polio at three, she found her way through a church choir in Langhirano, then Parma Conservatory and the Liceo Rossini, absorbing the perfectionist's work ethic that would make her one of the great lirico-spinto sopranos of the post-war stage at La Scala, San Carlo and, above all, the Metropolitan.

Her Moon burned in Aries in the ninth house: a masculine, Martian, warrior's Moon fed by higher learning, tradition and the great questions, so her emotional peace came from courage and from lineage both. And Leo rising gave her the regal presence, the queenly mask that turns a room when she enters. She held that torch for the verismo repertoire until her death in 2004, angel-voiced to the last.