by 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), an ultra-stylish French thriller Jean -Jacques Beineix announced the cinema du look, the movement that brought together visual confusion and alienation.
Post-modern in its blend of high and low culture, the film was based on the obsession of a postman, Jules (Frédéric Andréi), with an opera singer, played by Wilhelmenia Fernandez. Her character, Cynthia, refuses to allow her music to be recorded. Reciting, Jules secretly tapes her doing the singer’s signature aria.
This was Ebben? Ne andrò lontana (“Fine – I’ll go far from here”) from La Wally, composed in 1892 by Alfredo Catalani, a now-forgotten contemporary – and rival – of Puccini’s. Conductor Arturo Toscanini (who called one of his daughters Wally) loved Catalan but had the misfortune to die of consumption at 39.
The Aria is the most famous work in Catalonia. The opera itself has only been performed a handful of times since his death, partly because of the difficulties of satisfactorily staging the heroine’s tragic end as she wears it down.
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, a natural film actress, but the director captured the beauty of both her voice and her looks in the concert scene, for which she wore a stunning silver dress.
This was later stolen by her appraiser, Jules. He and Cynthia then enjoy a brief romance as he escapes Taiwanese raiders and pirates looking, for various reasons, for his cassette. In the film’s most memorable moment, Jules evades his pursuers by riding his moped down the Paris Metro system.
Diva’s sleek aesthetic, later seen in Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) and the work of her rival Luc Besson, helped her achieve international success. It ran in New York for two years and was nominated for France’s Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Fernandez, however, never found the cinema again.
The eldest of two children, Wilhelmenia Wiggins was born in Philadelphia on 5 January 1949 and was raised mostly by her mother, who sewed clothes and was also the organist at a Baptist church, in the choir Wilhelmenia sang from the age of five age.
She was educated at William Penn High School for Girls and at Settlement Music School, where her voice was trained by soprano, Tillie Barmach. But after graduating from the Philadelphia Academy of Vocal Arts, she began to doubt her talents and worked as a secretary in the insurance business for several years.
In 1968, she plucked up the courage to apply to the Juilliard School, New York. Although she didn’t know any arias she could audition for, she was immediately awarded a scholarship. She managed to study there while working eight hours a day as a secretary, but left without completing her degree after her first husband, Ormon Fernandez (strangely, himself a postman) get married and find out she was 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 Houston Grand Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess, but was quickly promoted to play Bess.
The show toured Europe, where it was seen by Rolf Liebermann, the impresario who 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 repeated the role in New York and the following year, in Detroit, she played Marguerite in Faust. She sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Riccardo Muti, and was Aida at Luxor.
But she later revealed that she felt she was being held back by the prospect of being another Jessye Norman at a time when her treasure was not great. She was also harmed at auditions because of her race. When she wasn’t working, she stayed close to her roots in Philadelphia. Neighbors would open windows to hear her practice and she continued to sing in her local church choir.
Although he was to appear in 1991 in Verdi’s Luisa Miller at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Wilhelmenia Fernandez withdrew. Instead, she was the lead in London in Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein’s update on the Second World War of Bizet’s operas. Her performance won her that year’s Olivier award for Best Actress in a Musical.
She made recordings of Gershwin songs and spirituals but after that she was more attracted to teaching. Her second husband, Andrew Smith, a baritone, whom she married in 2001, directed the opera program at Kentucky State University, and earned degrees in voice and education. Later she found greater satisfaction working in a primary school with children with ADHD and autism.
She was predeceased by her husband in 2018 and is survived by her daughter.
Wilhelmenia Fernandez, born 5 January 1949, died 2 February 2024
