Wilhelmenia Fernandez
Opera singer who starred in Jean-jacques Beineix’s stylish and haunting French thriller Diva
WILHELMENIA FERNANDEZ, who has died of cancer aged 75, was an American soprano best known to European audiences for her performance in the title role of Diva (1981), Jean-jacques Beineix’s ultra-stylish French thriller which heralded the cinéma du look, the movement that combined visual extravagance and alienation.
The film revolved around the obsession of a postman, Jules (Frédéric Andréi), with an opera singer, played by Wilhelmenia Fernandez. Her character, Cynthia, refuses to let her music be recorded. At a recital, Jules secretly makes a tape of her performing what would become the singer’s signature aria. This was Ebben? Ne andrò lontana from La Wally, composed in 1892 by Alfredo Catalani, a now-forgotten contemporary – and rival – of Puccini. Catalani was much esteemed by Toscanini (who called one of his daughters Wally) but had the misfortune to die of consumption at 39.
The aria is Catalani’s most celebrated work. The opera itself has only been performed a handful of times since his death, partly because of the difficulties of staging the heroine’s tragic end as she throws herself under an avalanche.
Wilhelmenia Fernandez was initially reluctant to appear on camera, but relented after deciding that Beineix’s vision was closer to Disney than Hitchcock. She was not, perhaps, naturally a film actress, but the director captured the beauty of both her voice and her looks in the concert scene, for which she wore a striking silvery gown.
The sleek sheen of Diva’s aesthetic, later visible in Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) and the work of his confrère Luc Besson, helped to make it an international hit. It ran in New York for two years and was France’s nominee as Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Wilhelmenia Fernandez, however, never graced cinema again.
The elder of two children, she was born Wilhelmenia Wiggins in Philadelphia on January 5 1949 and raised largely by her mother, a seamstress and organist at a Baptist church, in the choir of which Wilhelmenia sang from the age of five.
She was educated at William Penn High School for Girls and at Settlement Music School, where her voice was trained by a soprano, Tillie Barmach. Yet after graduating from Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, she came to doubt her talent and for several years worked as a secretary.
In 1968, she plucked up the courage to apply to the Juilliard School, New York, and was awarded a scholarship. She managed to combine study there with working as a secretary, but left without finishing her degree after marrying her first husband, Ormon Fernandez (curiously, himself a postman), and finding herself pregnant.
By the mid-1970s her daughter, Sheena, was old enough to travel with her mother, and the marriage was over. Wilhelmenia Fernandez was hired for the chorus of a production by Houston Grand Opera of Porgy and Bess, but quickly promoted to play Bess. The show toured Europe, where she was seen by Rolf Liebermann, the impresario who had revived the Paris Opera. He cast her in 1979 as Musetta in La bohème, with Placido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa. Beineix approached her for Diva after seeing her performance.
Wilhelmenia Fernandez reprised the role in New York and the following year, in Detroit, was Marguerite in Faust. She sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti, and appeared as Aida at Luxor.
Yet she revealed later that she felt hampered by expectations that she would be another Jessye Norman at a time when her repertory was not large. She also experienced prejudice because of her race. When not working, she stayed close to her roots in Philadelphia. Neighbours would open windows to hear her practise and she continued to sing in her local church choir.
Although slated to appear in 1991 in Verdi’s Luisa Miller at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Wilhelmenia Fernandez withdrew. Instead, she played the lead in London in Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein’s updating of the Bizet opera. Her performance won her that year’s Olivier award as Best Actress in a Musical.
She did make recordings of songs from Gershwin and of spirituals but thereafter was more drawn to teaching. Her second husband, Andrew Smith, a baritone whom she married in 2001, directed the opera programme at Kentucky State University, and she took degrees in voice and education. Latterly she found fulfilment working in a primary school with children who have ADHD and autism.
Her husband predeceased her in 2018 and she is survived by her daughter.