When only nine years old Zeani (actual name Zehan) attended a performance of Madama Butterfly in Bucharest and set her heart upon a singing career. She sang in a local choir and began to have formal singing lessons when she was twelve, paid for by her choral work. Her first significant teacher, the noted Romanian Lucia Anghel, believed her to be a mezzo, and it was only when she changed teachers to the Russian-born coloratura soprano Lydia Lipkowska that she began to sing in her correct range. She so impressed the Italian Cultural Society in Bucharest that arrangements were made for her to study in Milan with Aureliano Pertile.

Zeani arrived in Italy in 1947, working not only with Pertile but also with many of the coaches from La Scala and also Luigi Ricci in Rome, giving her a link with the great verismo singers of the inter-war years. Her operatic stage debut took place in 1948 when she substituted for an ailing Margherita Carosio as Violetta / La traviata at the Teatro Duse, Bologna. She was so well-prepared and so successful that she was immediately offered a tour of thirty performances: indeed Violetta would become a signature part for her.

Initially Zeani sang widely in the regional theatres of Italy, although in 1950 she took part in a tour of Egypt during which she sang Nedda / Pagliacci, Micaëla / Carmen and Adina / L’elisir d’amore opposite Gigli. Tullio Serafin asked her to substitute for a sick Maria Callas in 1952 as Elvira / I puritani at the Teatro Communale, Florence and this triggered several international appearances during 1953, notably as Violetta at the Stoll Theatre, London when she also sang Mimì / La Bohème. She made her debut at La Scala, Milan in 1956 as Cleopatra / Giulio Cesare (Handel); the title role was sung by Nicola Rossi-Lemeni, whom she married shortly afterwards.

By now Zeani was a key figure in Italy: from 1955 she was closely associated with the Rome Opera and appeared at the Verona Arena in 1956–1957, 1961 and 1963. She took the role of the young Blanche in the first performance of Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites, given at La Scala during 1957.

In the same year she made her debuts in Paris and Vienna, on both occasions as Violetta, and returned to London to sing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Stoll in London, two years before this opera was mounted by the Royal Opera House for Joan Sutherland. Zeani first appeared at the Royal Opera House, London in 1960 as Violetta (substituting for Sutherland) and enjoyed a triumph; she returned to sing the same role in 1962. Now singing internationally, she appeared throughout Europe, the Soviet Union, South America and South Africa in a repertoire that included Gilda / Rigoletto, Marguerite / Faust and Massenet’s Manon.

During the 1960s Zeani played a central role in the rediscovery of many of the lost works of the nineteenth-century Italian operatic repertoire, singing the title parts in Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan (Naples, 1962), Rossini’s Zelmira (Naples, 1965), Verdi’s Alzira (Rome, 1967) and Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello (Rome, 1968, designed by Giorgio di Chirico). In the middle of the decade Zubin Mehta suggested that she was now ready to sing heavier roles; and with him conducting she made her debut in the title role of Aida in Montreal in 1965 opposite Jon Vickers.

At the Metropolitan Opera, New York Zeani’s belated debut occurred in 1966, as Violetta (although she had originally been invited to sing there by Rudolf Bing in 1956). She also sang Elena with the Met in a concert performance of I vespri siciliani. Other roles included the title parts in Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Adriana Lecouvreur and Fedora, as well as the three heroines of Les Contes d’Hoffmann; and in the German repertoire Senta / Der fliegende Holländer.

Having enjoyed a notable success as Magda Sorel in a revival of Menotti’s The Consul at the Florence Maggio Musicale and Spoleto Festival in 1972, from 1980 Zeani and her husband began to teach at Indiana University. Two years later she formally retired from the stage, one of her last roles being Mère Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites with the San Francisco Opera. She was named ‘Teacher of the Year’ by the magazine Classical Singer in 2010, the year in which she was awarded Romania’s highest civil honour, ‘Nihil sine Deo’.

Zeani’s singing was unusual in that she was able to achieve a complete integration of bel canto vocal accuracy and verismo expression, giving her interpretations great dramatic power without in any way sacrificing musical priorities. Her extraordinary beauty ensured a strong stage presence. The conductor Richard Bonynge commented of her in Opera News in 1999: ‘Apart from Joan [Sutherland]… the voices I most remember are Flagstad, Virginia Zeani and Renata Tebaldi.’

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Singers, Naxos 8.558097-100).