Virginia Zeani, versatile opera diva, dies at 97
Virginia Zeani, a Romanian-born soprano who had an esteemed career in Italy and the United States and was internationally known for the versatility and dramatic intensity of her performances, died March 20 at a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. She was 97 and had been a longtime resident of West Palm Beach.
The death was announced by her son and only immediate survivor, Alessandro Rossi-Lemeni, who said the cause was a cardiac respiratory illness.
Ms. Zeani was equally at home in the standard Italian repertory, in the lighter Wagnerian soprano roles, in the bel canto operas of Rossini and Donizetti, or in one of the many world premieres that she sang. The most notable premiere was Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” at La Scala in 1957, in which she sang the role of the volatile and conflicted Sister Blanche.
But her specialty was the role of Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata,” which she sang more than 600 times after her first performance in 1948 in Bologna, most of them at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala. Violetta is a huge challenge for a singing actress, because every act makes different musical and dramatic demands.
The lively first act, when Violetta falls in love amid the elegant grandeur of a Paris party, has most of the high notes. Act II is all drama — the character is suddenly matured and facing the most painful decision of her life — while the final act is a protracted death scene, complete with final reunions and religious awakening.
In an interview this week, Matthew Epstein, a impresario based in New York with more than 50 years’ specialty in the vocal repertory and a friend of Ms. Zeani’s, called her “the best all-around Violetta” he ever witnessed. “Vocally, physically, histrionically, linguistically — she had it all, and she embodied the role.”
Yet Ms. Zeani had an unusual career in the United States. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in November 1966, only a few weeks after the company had moved into its vast new Lincoln Center home.
Preparations were chaotic. She came directly from the airport, had no rehearsal whatsoever, and was effectively thrown onto the stage to sing “Traviata” in an auditorium that even the stagehands barely knew. The audience was ecstatic, but the critics were not (although both the New York Times and the Daily News noted a distinct improvement after Act I).
In any event, Ms. Zeani sang only two of her three scheduled performances and returned to Europe.
In 1967, she sang a single outdoor performance of another Verdi opera, “I Vespri Siciliani,” with the Met touring company in Newport, R.I. She appeared in the house only once more, when the visiting Rome Opera brought Rossini’s rarely heard setting of “Otello” to New York in 1968.
Apparently, Rudolf Bing, the Met’s all-powerful general manager, had wanted to bring Ms. Zeani to the United States to stay for an extended period of time, and she had refused. She had married the Italian operatic bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni in 1957 and she liked her life in Europe, where the opera world was more casual.