Complex sentence: She had wanted to become an opera singer from an early age; her early musical inspirations were Mario Lanza and Jane Powell ("my father and mother, obviously") and later Maria Callas and Risë Stevens.
Split into simpler sentences: She had wanted to become an opera singer from an early age. Her early musical inspirations were Mario Lanza and Jane Powell ("my father and mother, obviously") and later Maria Callas and Risë Stevens.