“My favourite composer is Puccini,” says Borsi, “and I feel very good when I sing Puccini’s music. I was born in the south of Italy, near Rome, but I grew up in Tuscany not far from Pisa and Livorno.

When I arrived home from the hospital with my hours-old baby nearly three decades ago, my next-door neighbour was making a dramatic exit from her red brick house. She was an internationally renowned ...