Opera Scotland

Virginia Zeani Suggest updates

Virginia Zehan.

Born Solovastru, Transylvania,  21 October 1925.

Died West Palm Beach, Florida, 20 March 2023.

Romanian soprano.

Virginia Zeani has an excellent reputation as a dramatically powerful and versatile singing actress. She studied Literature at university before training at Bucharest under Anghel and Lydia Lipkovska. Having suffered much privation during the war, she was lucky to escape to the west just before the borders were closed. She then studied in Milan under the tenor Aureliano Pertile.

Her debut was at a few days notice at Bologna in 1948, as Violetta, which immediately became her signature role, singing it 648 times, including at Covent Garden and the Met.

She remained extremely versatie. Serafin engaged her to sing in Bellini's I Puritani. After this, she went to the Teatro Reale, Cairo.  Additional early appearances at Italian theatres included Turin, Rome, Palermo and Parma. Her debut at La Scala, Milan, in 1956 was as Handel's Cleopatra, and the following year she created the part of Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites.

Zeani made her first visit to Britain in 1953 with Eugene Iskoldoff's Italian company, with roles including Violetta and Mimì. They appeared in London (Stoll Theatre, Kingsway) before touring widely, including Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. She sang Lucia at the Stoll in 1957, two years before Sutherland's great Covent Garden success.  She herself also worked at Covent Garden in 1959.

She appeared at the New York Met in 1966.

Zeani featured in major revivals of neglected bel canto operas, including Rossini (Otello), Donizetti (Maria di Rohan) and Verdi (Alzire). Her later repertoire included Verdi (Aïda); Offenbach (Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia) and Puccini (Manon Lescaut, Tosca).  Later roles by Poulenc included Elle in La Voix Humaine. One of her last appearances (in 1982) was in San Francisco as Mère Marie in Carmelites.

Zeani made a number of recordings of arias as well as a complete Traviata.

 

Sources:

OperaScotland programme for Italian Opera Tour. (1953). London: Eugene Iskoldoff Productions.

Various obituaries.