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Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez Smith, a famend soprano identified for her efficiency in the 1981 French cult-classic movie “Diva” and who sang via the U.S. and Europe throughout her operatic profession, has died at age 75.
Funeral providers had been held Friday for Fernandez Smith at a church in Lexington, Kentucky, the place she had moved after residing for years in her native Philadelphia. She died of most cancers Feb. 2 at her residence in Lexington, daughter Sheena Maria Fernandez instructed The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Billed as Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, she opened the film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix carrying a white robe and singing in an ageing theater the aria “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana” from the opera “La Wally.” It grew to become the signature aria of her 25-year profession that took her to the nice opera homes in Europe and made her the centerpiece of gala events.
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She graduated from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and continued her training at the Juilliard School in New York. Filmmakers for “Diva” approached her whereas she sang “La boheme” in Paris, resulting in a movie shoot for the thriller that might change her life, the Inquirer reported.
Singer Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez is seen right here on the tv present ‘Le Grand Echiquier’ on March 21, 1983, in Paris, France. (Hervé TARDY/Gamma-Rapho by way of Getty Images)
“The film gave me an exposure that I could not have imagined, and I had to catch up with my own fame when the floodgates opened to do countless operas,” she recalled. “My repertory simply wasn’t that great, and there was so much expectation to do everything well.”
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Fernandez Smith spent extra time in Kentucky after her now-late husband, Andrew Smith, returned in the Nineteen Nineties to the world the place he grew as much as direct the voice program at Kentucky State University, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported. In Lexington, she was often known as a particular training instructor at an elementary college and a member of Main Street Baptist Church, the place she labored with the kids’s music program.
“Wilhelmenia was always a very quiet person and did not crave the limelight,” Everett McCorvey, director of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, instructed the Lexington newspaper. “Although the limelight craved her.”
In addition to her daughter, Fernandez Smith’s survivors embody a sister, Kerr (*75*) Funeral Home of Lexington stated on its web site.
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