Virginia Zeani, great bel-canto soprano who sang Violetta in La Traviata 648 times – obituary

Virginia Zeani, who has died aged 97, was one of the great bel-canto sopranos of the mid-20th century; known for her dramatic intensity and the supple nature of her voice, she made her name as Verdi’s tragic courtesan Violetta in La traviata, a role she sang a remarkable 648 times during her long career.

It was as Violetta that she made her British debut at the Stoll Theatre, London, in May 1953 with Gianni Raimondi as Alfredo. “Black-haired and beautiful … the 27-year-old soprano captivated a cold audience and in the end had them clamouring their praise for herself and the rest of a talented company,” noted the Sunday Dispatch.

Four years later she reprised the role, this time with Alfredo Kraus, drawing praise from The Daily Telegraph’s Martin Cooper who declared: “The generous volume of Virginia Zeani’s voice and the brilliant spiritedness of her florid singing provided much to admire and enjoy in her Violetta.”

Meanwhile, the composer Francis Poulenc had seen her Violetta in Paris and invited her to create the role of Blanche for the January 1957 premiere of his opera Dialogues des Carmélites, which was sung in Italian at La Scala, Milan. “When I read it, I saw this moving, beautiful sense of fear,” she told Opera magazine. “Blanche was a noble woman. I am not noble, but I understand her fear.”

Virginia Zeani’s Covent Garden debut came in January 1960, when she stepped in as Violetta for Joan Sutherland, who had laryngitis, returning there in her own right in the summer. Meanwhile, when Maria Callas heard her on the radio, she apparently turned to her husband and said: “That woman is my only rival.”

Virginia Zehan was born on October 21 1925 in Solovăstru, a Transylvanian village in Romania; later she Italianised her name to Zeani. “There was no electric lighting and we had no water in the house, so each morning my parents went to the river,” she recalled.

Her earliest musical memory was hearing gypsies at village fairs. She saw her first opera, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, in Bucharest aged nine. “I came home and said to my mother, who had not been with me in the theatre, ‘Mummy, I will be a great opera singer,’” she said. Later she sang Butterfly at La Scala.

Virginia Zeani’s first lessons were when she was 13 with Lucia Anghel, who insisted that she was a mezzo-soprano. Her next teacher, the great Russian soprano Lydia Lipkowska, thought differently and developed her soprano range.

Wartime Romania was a dangerous place and Virginia Zeani recalled hiding in a wheat field when Russian army deserters entered her village. She later learnt that they had raped and killed a woman she knew.

Having learnt four operas by heart, she travelled to post-war Italy for lessons with singers from La Scala, including the tenor Aureliano Pertile. She knocked on his door but was overwhelmed with emotion and burst into tears. Pertile not only taught her to express the colours of the words, but also encouraged her to become known through auditions.

In May 1948 the Teatro Duse in Bologna needed a replacement Violetta for Margherita Carosio. Despite never having sung with full orchestra, Virginia Zeani made her debut at three days’ notice and was offered another 30 performances. The timing was perfect because her money from Romania had run out.

A similar opportunity came in 1952 when the conductor Tullio Serafin asked her to replace Maria Callas as Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani in Florence. Also in the cast was Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, the Turkish-born Italian bass, and four years later she sang Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare opposite him in the title role at her La Scala debut. A week later he proposed.

They were married in 1957, though the director of La Scala promptly turned against her. Likewise, Rudolf Bing at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, was angered by her refusal to leave her infant son in Italy and it was not until 1966 that she made her Met debut, again as Violetta.

Having recorded a well-received disc of operatic arias in 1956 for Decca, she declined a longer contract because of family and opera-house commitments. By the time she was ready, the label had discovered Joan Sutherland and Montserrat Caballé. In recent years bootleg recordings of her performances have appeared on the internet.

For 20 years Virginia Zeani reigned as “prima donna assoluta” at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. By the 1970s she was singing heavier parts, including title roles in Aida, Tosca and Manon Lescaut and eventually amassed 69 roles in six languages.

In 1979 she and Rossi-Lemeni were invited to join Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. “Nicola was reticent, saying how could we leave Rome, and I said what are we going to do in Rome through our sixties and seventies … go to museums and visit the Roman ruins?” she told the Gramilano website. The move meant her learning English aged 56.

Virginia Zeani increasingly worked with younger singers, including Sylvia McNair, Elina Garanča and her compatriot Angela Gheorghiu. While she did not miss learning new roles or juggling commitments, she did miss the audiences. “Teachers do not have a big public,” she told The Palm Beach Post in Florida, where she finally retired, surrounded by a lifetime of musical ephemera.

Nicola Rossi-Lemeni died in 1991 and she is survived by their son, Alessandro, a surgeon.

Virginia Zeani, born October 21 1925, died March 20 2023